"Prove I'm alive": 130 million names struck off India's voter rolls as protests challenge Modi government

India’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls has removed about 130 million names, sparking mass protests and posing the biggest challenge yet to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government, Reuters reported on 20 October.

“Nobody listens”

Names have been struck off for reasons ranging from “logical discrepancies” to people being recorded as dead. Reuters told the story of a 53-year-old Delhi tailor, one of 4.2 million Delhi voters removed in draft rolls published on 31 August, who has had to give up his daily wage of 250 rupees ($2.63) to go from office to office proving he is alive. “I told them I voted in the last assembly and general elections and have been voting for 35 years, but nobody listens,” he said. Other voters were wrongly marked as “shifted” because they lacked land papers or a water bill, and some were told to register again as new voters. Poorer voters fear that losing registration could also cut them off from subsidised rations and welfare schemes.

Both sides

Opposition parties and youth groups have staged near-daily protests in New Delhi and elsewhere, which police have met with force. They accuse Election Commission chief Gyanesh Kumar of manipulating the revision to help Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party; the commission and the BJP deny this. The commission says it is removing duplicate, deceased, shifted and otherwise ineligible voters, and that anyone excluded in error can file claims and appeal before the rolls are finalised. After weeks of protests it ordered fresh verification in some states, including Delhi. The commission did not reply to Reuters’ request for comment for the story.