Sameen Ud Din has lived at the same address in Old Delhi for years. He voted in the 2025 Delhi elections. But when the draft voter list for the Special Intensive Revision, or SIR, was published this time around, his name was missing.
“It is an irony not to find my name in the SIR list. I did not receive any notice from the Election Commission of India [ECI] when my name was deleted,” Din, a 44-year-old businessman from the Nizam Ud Din area of Old Delhi, told Middle East Eye.
“I am now being asked to fill out Form 6, an application to register as a new voter, which is clearly a false declaration and carries penal consequences,” he added.
Din said he did not know what would happen next and felt pressured to submit the form. India's next general election is in 2029.
But Din is not alone. Muslims in different parts of India have reported similar problems, with countless people finding their names missing from the draft voter lists.
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Approximately 133 million names had been flagged for removal from the voter list.
Critics say many eligible voters have been removed, with Muslims and Dalits – Dalits occupy the lowest rung in Hinduism’s caste system – among those mostly affected.
An investigation from The Wire shows that in West Bengal, out of 2.75 million on the published list of removals, approximately 1.8 million were Muslims - or around 70 percent of the total published "ineligible to vote" list. Muslims make up just 25 percent of that state's electorate.
In some districts, according to The Wire, removals of Muslims made up over 90 percent of the total published removals.
This disparity has also brought protesters onto the streets of New Delhi. At one mid-October protest, India's Congress Party estimated that 250,000 people were present, while tens of thousands have been protesting across the country.
Protests suppressed
The Cockroach Janta Party, or CJP, called for demonstrations against the SIR under the slogan “Lehra Do Tiranga” or “Wave the Tricolour”. Protesters carrying national flags gathered at Connaught Place before moving towards Dilli Haat and other parts of central Delhi.
“Gyanesh Kumar, resign”, “Down with Delhi Police”, and “Whenever Modi is scared, he sends the police to the front” were among the other slogans protesters shouted.
'Our demand is clear: roll back the SIR because it is a state tool to change the country’s voting demographics'
- Vishnu, protester
The CJP began in May 2026 as a satirical online movement founded by digital strategist Abhijeet Dipke.
At the time, the movement was demanding the resignation of Dharmendra Pradhan, a senior leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party or BJP, and the education minister in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s cabinet. The protest came after the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET), one of the world’s largest medical entrance exams, was leaked; it determines admissions into five-year undergraduate medical courses in India.
It has since developed into a street protest movement.
Today protesters now want the government to stop the SIR and demand the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar.
Figures cited by the ruling BJP show that about 130 million names were dropped from draft voter lists during the revision of the list. The ECI says the deletions are meant to clean up the rolls by removing the names of dead, duplicate or ineligible voters.
The protests against these actions took place despite a ban imposed by the BJP-led Delhi government on gatherings of four or more people in some areas.
The restrictions came after Delhi Police removed Jantar Mantar, an 18th-century observatory and a long-time protest site, from its list of approved protest locations on 12 October. Police named Ramlila Maidan, Burari Ground and CBD Ground in East Delhi as alternative locations.
“We are out to protest to protect democracy. There is no violence going on, but the police are still detaining people. It is illegal. These detentions are a symbol of a fascist state, and this has been happening in India for a long time,” a protester who gave only his first name, Vishnu, told MEE.
He was speaking from a private vehicle hired by Delhi Police to transport detained protesters.
“Our demand is clear: roll back the SIR because it is a state tool to change the country’s voting demographics. They have done it successfully in many places, and we want people to join us and fight this fascist government with us,” he added.
Police detained several CJP leaders and protesters during the demonstrations, including Dipke and All India Students Association president, Neha Bora.
Bora was released on Saturday morning. Dipke appeared before a Special Executive Magistrate court and was released after signing a bond, according to reports. Delhi Police registered at least two cases over the march for violating prohibitory orders.
‘Deleted votes are those of Muslims’
On 23 September, The Indian Express published an investigation into alleged irregularities at the Election Commission. The report said the ECI had bypassed legal requirements, raised concerns over the SIR and centralised the voter database.
It also reported that Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had formally objected at least 14 times in 10 months to decisions and orders issued without their knowledge, approval or consultation. Their concerns included the addition and deletion of voters, changes to Form 6, access to the electoral database, and the commission’s technology systems.
The ECI rejected claims of an internal rift. It said the notes were suggestions and that every decision taken in the past year, including those related to the SIR, was unanimous.
For SIR critics, however, the concern goes beyond the Election Commission's functioning. They say the revisions could determine who can vote and, in turn, affect India’s political landscape.
Ajay Gudavarthy, an associate professor at the Centre for Political Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, said available data on voter deletions suggested that Muslims made up a large share of those removed from the rolls.
He said he believed the deletions were part of a wider political strategy targeting Muslims and Dalits while building support among Other Backward Class, or OBCs, and upper castes. OBC is an official term employed by the government of India and is an umbrella classification for communities that are deprived or disadvantaged, whether economically, socially or in terms of education.
“An overwhelming majority of the deleted votes are those of Muslims. This is one reason there is no mass outrage against the SIR. The BJP’s larger design is not only to delete Muslim votes but also to socially polarise people on the basis of these deletions,” Gudavarthy told MEE.
“Alongside Muslims, Dalit votes are also being deleted in order to achieve a reverse consolidation of OBCs and the upper castes,” he added.
The experience of Sayed Rashad Ikmal’s family in Odisha shows how the deletion of names can affect voters at the local level.
Ikmal, a resident of Sungra village in Cuttack district, said the names of his aunt and her husband were missing from the draft SIR voter list, even though his uncle had worked in the finance department of Indian Railways.
“The omission came as a shock to the family, which, like several others in the village, worried about being left off the voter rolls,” Ikmal told MEE.
The family approached the booth-level officer and found that a Form 7 application had been filed with the ECI seeking the deletion of their names. Form 7 is used to object to the inclusion of a name or request the removal of an existing name from the voter roll.
The family later approached the Block Development Officer [BDO], who cancelled the request and restored both names to the SIR list, Ikmal told MEE.
He said the BDO's role was important because local officials could prevent people from being wrongly removed from voter lists.
“If the BDO does his job honestly, wrongful additions to or deletions from the voter rolls can be stopped, whatever happens at the higher level,” he said.
The residents of Sungra and nearby villages, Ikmal said, had begun to feel that Muslims were being targeted in Odisha. He said these concerns had grown alongside the spread of the “Go to Bangladesh” narrative among people linked to Hindu right-wing groups.
“I describe the threat of being sent to Bangladesh as one of the most intimidating narratives directed at Muslims,” Ikmal said, referring to political claims about Bangladeshi infiltration into Assam and West Bengal.
“The narrative had been used to divide voters ahead of state elections in both states and to build support for the BJP,” he added.
For Gudavarthy, the issue points to a larger question about the strength of India’s democratic institutions.
“The system needs to be made accountable only through mass protests and institutional decentralisation,” he said. “It is a lesson for Indian democracy that institutions can be so easily subverted when there is executive overreach,” he added.
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