NewzA voter roll revision has removed 130 million names across India, leaving many people scrambling to prove they are alive, establish residency and reclaim their right to vote. Kamta Prasad has been shuttling between government offices in Delhi, trying to prove he is not dead. The 53-year-old tailor is among 130 million names removed from India's electoral rolls under a voter roll revision that has sparked mass protests and posed the biggest challenge to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government.
The Special Intensive Revision (SIR) has led to removals for reasons ranging from "logical discrepancies" to people being recorded as dead, leaving many such as Prasad struggling to get more than just their voting status restored. He has had to forgo his daily wage of 250 rupees ($2.63) that supports his family of four to scurry around the city to reverse the error. "I panicked when I heard about it," said Prasad, who is among 4.2m Delhi voters struck off the list, according to the draft rolls published by the poll body on August 31.
"Since then I've been going everywhere to prove that I'm alive." Read: India's 'cockroach' movement founder released a day after detention The deletions have triggered a political storm, with opposition parties and youth groups staging near-daily protests in New Delhi and elsewhere, which have been met with force by the police. They allege Election Commission chief Gyanesh Kumar manipulated the revision to benefit Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), a charge denied by both the commission and the BJP. 'Nobody listens' According to Rajendra Kumar, a volunteer with non-profit Jan Sarokar, about 2,000 of the roughly 9,000 voters in Prasad's block were struck off after the revision, classified as absent, shifted, deceased or registered elsewhere.
Prasad is the only person in this block who has been declared dead, but several similar cases have been reported by local media across the country. The Election Commission has said it was removing duplicate, deceased, shifted and otherwise ineligible voters and that anyone excluded in error can file claims, submit supporting documents and pursue appeals before the rolls are finalised. For voters such as Prasad, however, exclusion leads to a bureaucratic maze, and depending on the circumstances they may have to provide proof of life, establish residency, correct alleged discrepancies or submit fresh documentation.
That involves repeated visits to election offices, hearings before electoral officials and multiple rounds of appeals, with some spending weeks or mo…
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