Millions in India Fight to Prove Their Right to Vote

New Delhi (GNP): Millions of Indians are struggling to prove they are eligible to vote under a nationwide electoral roll revision that has removed more than 133 million names. The exercise has sparked protests and allegations that it hits Muslims, women and poorer communities hardest.

The figure, cited by opposition parties in court filings, includes 28 million people recorded as deceased. It makes the revision one of the largest clean-ups of voter records the country has seen.

The Election Commission of India (ECI) says the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) is a lawful exercise meant to update voter records and keep them accurate. It has rejected claims that the process is politically motivated.

Opposition parties and rights campaigners are not convinced. They warn that the documentation rules could shut out eligible citizens, especially those without older identity and family records.

The rules require voters to link themselves to electoral rolls from 2002 and 2003, either through their own records or those of their parents or grandparents. That is hard for people who were too young to vote at the time, or whose family papers no longer exist.

The strain is visible in Delhi. Laddli Khatun, a 39-year-old slum resident, has submitted several documents but still does not know whether she will keep her vote. Her parents died when she was a baby and left no papers behind.

Others have been dropped from draft rolls altogether. Surajmukhi, who lost her home in a slum demolition, was marked “untraceable” even though she has voted before. She says officials themselves once visited her home to enrol her.

Election staff admit the process is not easy for everyone. Mukesh Khanna, a booth-level officer in a Delhi suburb, acknowledged that tracing records to 2002 is hard for people with little education or technology access. Special assistance camps have been set up, but many voters still struggle to finish the process.

Automated checks add another layer of concern. Millions of voters have reportedly been flagged for extra verification over what the commission calls “logical discrepancies”, such as differences in names and family details.

An analysis of Delhi voter data found that Muslims made up about 20 per cent of those flagged, though they account for 13.6 per cent of the electorate. The Sabar Institute, based in Kolkata, reported an even wider gap in West Bengal.

Individual cases show how the system works in practice. Shahida, a 42-year-old street cleaner, received a notice because records showed her mother was only 15 years older than her. The system treated the gap as suspicious, though child marriage was common among poor families at the time.

Aslam, a 24-year-old national rugby player and actor, was also flagged after the system linked six other people to his late father. He alleges the exercise targets voters who do not back the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Protesters in New Delhi make a similar charge. They are demanding the resignation of the chief election commissioner and accuse the exercise of favouring Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s BJP.

The BJP defends the revision, arguing that stronger verification is needed to keep ineligible voters, including undocumented migrants from Bangladesh, off the lists. The party has repeatedly raised concerns about fraudulent registrations involving undocumented migrants, particularly Muslims.

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The Supreme Court has clarified that removal from the rolls does not, on its own, prove a person is a foreign national. Even so, cases have been reported in West Bengal where people removed from voter lists were later accused of being undocumented Bangladeshi migrants, detained and, in some instances, sent across the border.

This is why rights campaigners fear the consequences could go well beyond voting. Transparency activist Anjali Bhardwaj said, “Women, minorities and the poorest are the worst hit by this exercise.”

Former election commissioner Ashok Lavasa also questioned the logic of the process. He said, “It was never that you asked people wholesale to establish their eligibility all over again.”

For Khatun, the fear is more personal. She said, “I have provided document after document, everything that I have.”