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Public anger is growing over an exercise that critics say undermines the world’s largest democracy, particularly disenfranchising Muslims under the Hindu nationalist government.
Mujib MashalPragati K.B. and Hari Kumar
The reporters have followed the voter roll revision exercise across several states. They spoke to officials across party lines and studied court documents.
Nearly a billion people in the world’s biggest democracy are being asked to show documents to prove that they should keep the right to vote.
The exercise is billed by an election commission appointed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi as cleaning India’s voter roll of duplicates and discrepancies. So far, it has expunged over 130 million names — more than the population of Mexico.
Tens of millions of voters have been flagged by algorithms for deletion over anomalies in their information. Millions who have appealed their deletions remain stuck in adjudication, deprived of their right to vote during close-fought elections earlier this year. Some removed for being dead are challenging the decision based on the fact they are very much alive.
Public anger is turning into widespread protests, as evidence piles up that the exercise is disenfranchising parts of society seen as less likely to support Mr. Modi’s ruling Hindu nationalist party. India’s 200 million Muslims appear to have been disproportionately targeted.
Protesters are calling for the resignation of Gyanesh Kumar, the chief of the election commission, a body that was long held in high regard for running relatively fair polls in a region with a history of coups and autocratic governance.
“The heart of our democracy, which is the right to vote, is at great peril,” Rohinton Nariman, a former solicitor general of India and a supreme court judge, said in a lecture last week.
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