BJP and Election Commission of India Colluding on “Organized Deletion” of Marginalized Voters, “Subverting the Elections of India”: Indian Opposition

August 20, 2025 (Washington, DC) – India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is colluding with the Election Commission of India (ECI) to illegally manipulate voter rolls in a way that would keep minorities from threatening the BJP’s vote share, thereby “subverting the elections of India”, India’s main opposition party, the Congress, has said.

“[If] I am a BJP candidate, I don’t want Muslim voters. I don’t want backward class voters and backward caste voters and… Dalit [voters],” Indian National Congress Party spokesperson Pawan Khera said at a virtual Congressional Briefing hosted today by a coalition of civil and human rights groups. “What is being done in Bihar… [and] in the rest of the country is organized deletion, legitimized by the Election Commission of India. [BJP candidates’ voter lists are] being purged by the Election Commission of India in collusion with the BJP.” 

Khera was speaking days after opposition leader in Indian Parliament, Rahul Gandhi, alleged over 100,000 manipulated entries in the voter list for a single suburb of Bangalore city. Gandhi further alleged that, based on these and other irregularities in the ECI’s election data, the Congress Party had lost at least 48 seats in the 2024 general elections.

“[This] evidence was taken from the Election Commission of India,” Khera said. “So we presented that data. The Election Commission responded by asking Mr. Gandhi to give an affidavit. How can the Election Commission not trust the papers supplied to us by the Election Commission?”

“The Election Commission is absolutely cornered,” he continued. “The ruling party is cornered. The Chief Election Commissioner held a press conference … where not a single query of ours, not a single charge that we’ve leveled against them was responded to.”

The allegations of vote theft were raised just weeks after the ECI carried out an unconstitutional directive, which mandated nearly 80 million voters in Bihar state to re-register by July 26 or risk being stripped of their right to vote and reported as “suspected foreign nationals.” The exercise places millions of people at risk of disenfranchisement, exclusion, and potential loss of citizenship and deportation. 

Khera elaborated on this threat, saying, “It’s not just an attack on [citizens’] votes. It starts from there. It then goes on to your rights as a citizen to become beneficiaries of government schemes, ration, free ration, pensions, housing, and of course, later, citizenship also, your identity.” 

He added, “If a ruling party… is so confident [as to say] ‘whether you vote for me or not, I’ll still win,’ then [they’re] not answerable anymore, [they’re] not accountable anymore, [they’re] not afraid anymore. That’s where we stand today.”

Khera also condemned the arrest of dozens of opposition leaders who protested the ECI in Delhi, saying, “There was no reason to arrest them. They should have been allowed to march up to the Election Commission of India, give their representation. Why should the doors of the mighty Election Commission be shut to the very people’s representatives who are fighting for the rights of people to vote?”

Echoing Rahul Gandhi’s recent warning to the BJP and its collaborators, Khera added, “When we come to power… we would owe it to our democracy, owe it to the people of India to take action against all those people who have colluded in subverting the elections of India.”

The briefing was co-sponsored by the Indian American Muslim Council, Hindus for Human Rights, World Against Genocide, New York State Council of Churches, Genocide Watch, The Religious Nationalism Project, The Humanism Project (Australia), Diaspora in Action for Human Rights and Democracy, Center for Pluralism, and Association of Indian Muslims of America, Washington DC.