India's Opposition Rallies in Delhi Over 130 Million Names Removed From Voter Rolls. Turnout Fell Short of the Promise

Tens of thousands of opposition supporters rallied in Delhi on Sunday against the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, amid growing anger over a revision of India's voter rolls that has erased 130 million names, The Guardian reported.

Opposition leaders allege the process, known as the special intensive revision, or SIR, gives Modi's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party an electoral advantage. They have called for the resignation and impeachment of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar. The BJP denies the claims.

Opposition leader Rahul Gandhi of the Congress party told the crowd that Kumar had "carried out the biggest crime. He has tried to silence the voice of people, strangulate our country," according to The Guardian. Gandhi said the opposition alliance, known by the acronym INDIA (Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance), would not let "democracy be finished in the country," and warned Modi: "You can't run anywhere."

BJP president JP Nadda said the rally would be the "nail in the coffin" for the alliance and called it "not an act of respect for democracy. It is a calculated conspiracy to plunge the nation into anarchy, all in the name of democracy."

The voter-roll revision first emerged last year but became a national scandal after an Indian Express investigation revealed irregularities and discord within the Election Commission over its implementation, The Guardian reported. Millions of people who say they are eligible have found their names missing, and critics say Muslims and other minorities have been disproportionately affected.

Human Rights Watch said last week that the accusations raise "serious questions about the fairness of future Indian elections," according to The Guardian. The Election Commission has defended the revision as necessary to remove duplicate, deceased and ineligible entries; the commission's position was not detailed in The Guardian's report.

Congress leaders had predicted a million attendees. The crowd was in the tens of thousands, and empty seats were visible, The Guardian reported. Most of those present were party workers bused in, though the opposition said police barricades stopped many buses from entering Delhi.

The rally came amid a broader resurgence of dissent. Youth-led protests over the summer, by a movement that satirically calls itself the "Cockroaches," forced the resignation of a cabinet minister and returned to the streets last month over the voter-roll revision. Cockroach leaders endorsed Sunday's rally but did not attend, reflecting a trust gap with established parties, according to The Guardian.

Some attendees said they came for reasons other than party loyalty. Shalini, a restaurant owner from Goa, said she was there "not for the opposition but because I am against the BJP and how they are trying to remove any avenue of dissent in this country." Arwind Chaudhery, 48, said, "I am here because SIR has undermined our democracy."

India is the world's largest democracy, with roughly 970 million registered voters before the revision, according to the Election Commission's figures for the 2024 general election. A removal of 130 million names would represent more than an eighth of that electorate. The opposition has lost the last three general elections to the BJP.

The dispute echoes questions being argued in the United States this week about who maintains voter rolls and how. In Boston, federal election monitors will observe Tuesday's voting, and Massachusetts officials have said list maintenance follows state and federal law. The systems and scale differ sharply, but the principle at stake, that eligible voters must be able to vote, is the same.

Whether the opposition can turn rallies into an impeachment motion against Kumar, which would require parliamentary numbers it does not currently hold, and whether courts intervene on behalf of voters who say they were wrongly removed, are the open questions. India's Supreme Court has heard challenges to earlier phases of the revision.