Millions are struck off India's voter rolls in largest disenfranchisement in history
NEW DELHI —
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Millions → strike → history
Like many Indians, Kanchan has one name and lives in hardscrabble quarters.
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Kanchan → have → quarters
Her home is built of tin and a tarp, constructed under a flyover in the capital New Delhi.
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home → build → capital
And like many on the margins, Kanchan was proud of her right to vote — a rare equalizer in unequal India.
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Kanchan → vote → India
"It's important, because it shows we are citizens," Kanchan said on a recent October day, sitting on a plastic chair as vehicles trundled overhead.
But a few weeks ago, Kanchan said about 500 adults were deleted from their voter roll in this community, which resides around a bridge.
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which → show → bridge
They found out through another resident who is allowed to examine the voter rolls as a representative of a political party.
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who → find → party
They were among an estimated 130 million names that were deleted during a revision of voter rolls that began last year in June.
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that → estimate → June
The number is an estimate by Yogendra Yadav, an elections specialist and prominent critic of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
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number → rule → Party
Nevertheless, the BJP has cited the figure as authoritative in its defense of the voter roll revision.
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BJP → cite → revision
The rolls once had listed 980 million names.
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rolls → list → names
"The government is choosing the people that support them," Kanchan told NPR, accusing the BJP of engineering voter rolls to disenfranchise communities opposed to the party.
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Kanchan → choose → party
That is a widespread belief among critics of the voter revision process, including a former chief election commissioner of India, SY Quraishi.
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That → include → India
"Normally voters choose the government, here the government was choosing the voters," said Quraishi, who served in that role from 2010 to 2012.
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who → choose → 2012
India's election commission, which is overseeing the voter revision, is ostensibly independent.
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which → oversee → revision
But critics accuse chief commissioner Gyanesh Kumar of being partisan to Prime Minister Modi's party.
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critics → accuse → party
And it is the party, not the commission, that has mounted a defense of the revision.
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that → mount → revision
In a video issued on the BJP's YouTube channel in early October, it said those approximately 130 million deleted names were of people who had died, had duplicate entries, had moved residences or were otherwise absent.
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who → issue → residences
Kanchan said in her community, people were deleted on the basis they had relocated, even though an election official came to visit and she "made me sign and hand over the form to her."
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me → say → her
And activists helping Indians get back on the voter roll say many others were deleted because they could not provide information that had never been demanded of voters before, like demonstrating that their parents or grandparents voted in elections more than two decades ago.
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parents → help → elections
Others were told to prove who they were after discrepancies appeared between how their names were spelled on voter rolls and how they were spelled on enumeration forms that were distributed to some, but not all, voters.
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that → tell → voters
One notice was handed to Nasir Malik, a community activist in a New Delhi quarter called Mustafabad, who waved it around on a recent day.
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who → hand → day
"This makes no sense," he told NPR.
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he → make → NPR
"If this was a problem, how did I vote in elections before this?"
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I → vote → this
Name spelling discrepancies are so common in India that experts said they were not regarded as a problem in previous voter roll revisions, as long as the local election official believed they were dealing with the same person.
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they → say → person
In a downtown New Delhi café, a lawyer who has filed multiple petitions against the voter revision process said his country once took pride in ensuring that every eligible adult could vote.
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adult → file → pride
Now, the burden of proof was flipped onto citizens to prove who they were, triggering "the largest disenfranchisement exercise in human history," said the lawyer, Kaustubh Chaturvedi.
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lawyer → flip → history
What you've really done is you've purged the right to the vote from almost all of those who need it most.
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who → do → it
By ratio, the Jim Crow laws led to higher percentages of people being disenfranchised in the United States, according to historian Carole Anderson, who has written extensively about voter suppression of Black communities.
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who → lead → communities
For 27-year-old Kanchan, in the New Delhi community around the bridge, her right to vote wasn't just about voting.
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right → vote → voting
She's raising her 6-year-old son alone after her husband, a food delivery driver, was killed in a road accident four years ago.
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husband → raise → accident
She supplements her teaching income with a monthly government stipend equivalent to $25, and free monthly food staples of rice, wheat and sugar.
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She → supplement → rice
She feared authorities would deny her those services by calling into question her citizenship, because she was struck off voter rolls.
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she → fear → rolls
"They'll cut us off from everything slowly," she fretted.
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she → cut → everything
Those fears were particularly triggered after government officials in some states ruled by the BJP vowed to strike people off assistance programs if they'd been deleted off voter rolls.
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they → trigger → rolls
After an outcry over voter deletions in September, the election commission said it worked with "complete integrity."
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it → say → integrity
It said officers would help those deleted from voter rolls to be reinstated.
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those → say → rolls
Sunil Kumar, a senior election official in Kanchan's constituency of Chandi Chowk told NPR that his department was working to get Kanchan's community back onto voter lists.
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community → tell → lists
Any help now has come too late for some disenfranchised Indians, like Malika, who only has one name.
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who → come → name
In the working-class quarter of Mustafabad, Malika worried she'd now be accused of being an illegal migrant, because she was struck off voter rolls.
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she → work → rolls
Her concern stems from the claim by the powerful interior minister, Amit Shah, who first said the voter revision would be aimed at detecting, deleting and deporting infiltrators.
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revision → stem → infiltrators
…and 16 more, not listed.
The Aporia
