Thousands Protest India Voter Roll Revision

Thousands of people took to the streets of New Delhi on Sunday to protest changes to India’s electoral register, with opposition leaders demanding the resignation of the country’s chief election commissioner over alleged attempts to benefit the ruling party.

The nationwide revision of voter lists has triggered political tensions and demonstrations over the past month, as opposition parties accuse the Election Commission of manipulating the process in favour of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

The commission maintains that the exercise is aimed at ensuring accurate electoral records, while the BJP and election authorities have rejected claims of political interference.

Sunday’s demonstration was led by Congress party leader Rahul Gandhi, with demonstrators chanting slogans accusing the election authorities of stealing votes as they marched through central New Delhi towards Ramlila Maidan.

One demonstrator, 46-year-old Nandita, told AFP that she had voted since turning 18 but recently discovered that her name had been removed from the register.

She said the protest was an opportunity to oppose what she viewed as worsening conditions in the country, including rising living costs, and stressed the importance of peaceful public demonstrations.

The Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), a youth-led movement that grew through social media, has also joined the campaign against the voter-list changes.

Figures reported by Indian media and cited by opposition parties in court filings indicate that more than 133 million names have been removed from electoral registers during the exercise.

Critics argue that the deletions have disproportionately affected minority communities, particularly Muslims.

Members of the Hindu-nationalist BJP have repeatedly alleged that undocumented migrants from neighbouring Bangladesh fraudulently obtained places on India’s voter lists.

However, election officials say the revision is intended to remove duplicate registrations, deceased voters and fraudulent entries. They have also maintained that eligible citizens whose names are missing can apply to be reinstated.

Human Rights Watch has criticised the exercise, describing the removals as arbitrary and seriously flawed.

The rights organisation called on Indian authorities to abandon the process, arguing that it had deprived vulnerable communities of their voting rights and access to other government services.

“The authorities should immediately scrap the voter roll revision process that has denied India’s most marginalised people their right to vote and other government services,” it said in a statement this week.

The CJP has played a prominent role in organising opposition to the revision, with several of its leaders briefly detained by police during demonstrations last month.

Since its launch in May, the movement has attracted millions of followers on social media.

It previously organised protests in July over alleged examination irregularities, which led to the resignation of India’s education minister in what was described as an unusual concession by Modi’s administration.