Declared dead: Indian voters fight to get back on electoral rolls

Kamta Prasad has been going from one government office to another in Delhi trying to prove he is not dead.

The 53-year-old tailor is among about 130 million people whose names have been removed from India’s electoral rolls under a voter roll revision that has sparked mass protests and become the biggest challenge to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government, Dawn reported, citing Reuters.

The Special Intensive Revision (SIR) has removed voters for reasons ranging from “logical discrepancies” to being recorded as dead. Prasad, listed as “Kanta Prasad”, was declared dead in the list published on August 1.

“I panicked when I heard about it,” said Prasad, one of 4.2 million Delhi voters struck off, according to draft rolls published on August 31. “Since then I’ve been going everywhere to prove that I’m alive.”

He has had to give up his daily wage of 250 Indian rupees, which supports his family of four, to try to reverse the error. “I told them I voted in the last assembly and general elections and have been voting for 35 years, but nobody listens,” he said.

A political storm

The deletions have triggered near-daily protests by opposition parties and youth groups in New Delhi and elsewhere, which police have met with force.

The protesters allege that Election Commission chief Gyanesh Kumar manipulated the revision to benefit Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Both the commission and the BJP deny the charge.

In Prasad’s block alone, about 2,000 of roughly 9,000 voters were struck off, classified as absent, shifted, deceased or registered elsewhere, according to Rajendra Kumar, a volunteer with the non-profit Jan Sarokar. Prasad is the only one there declared dead, but local media have reported similar cases across the country.

A maze of hearings

The Election Commission says it is removing duplicate, dead, shifted and otherwise ineligible voters, and that anyone excluded in error can file claims and appeal before the rolls are finalised. It did not reply to Reuters’ request for comment.

For those excluded, the process can mean:

• Proof of life for those marked dead
• Proof of residence or corrections to alleged discrepancies
• Repeated visits to election offices, hearings before officials and several rounds of appeals, sometimes for weeks or months

After weeks of protests, the commission ordered fresh verification in some states, including Delhi, and Prasad said officials had assured him his name would be restored.

“Our names have been cut”

Kamal Lal, a 38-year-old private school teacher, was marked as “shifted” even though he still lives in a settlement beneath a Delhi flyover with dozens of other families.

“It is very disappointing that we have been voting in this country and now our names have been cut because we do not have land papers or a water bill,” he said. He has attended hearings and filed several applications since learning of his exclusion in September.

Some excluded voters have been told to apply afresh as new voters rather than have their old registrations restored. “My husband is strongly opposed to that because he has voted in the last few elections,” said Mamta, 39, who does not use a surname. “I am worried that if our names are not restored to the list, I could lose access to subsidised ration and other government welfare schemes.”

Why it matters

India calls itself the world’s largest democracy, yet many of its citizens now have to prove they exist to keep their vote. The protests show no sign of ending while the rolls remain in doubt. Read our reports on the Gen Z protests against the election chief and on the opposition’s protests over the voter purge.

This article draws on reporting by Dawn and Reuters.