IAMC Condemns Mass Voter Deletions Across India as Systematic Disenfranchisement Targeting Muslims and Marginalized Communities
WASHINGTON, D.C. (April 13, 2026) — The Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC), the largest US-based advocacy organization of Indian American Muslims, today issued its strongest condemnation yet of the Election Commission of India’s (ECI) Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, which has resulted in the removal of approximately 5.2 crore (52 million) voter names across 12 states and Union Territories, a reduction of 10.2 percent of the electorate in those regions.
The scale of deletions is without precedent in independent India’s history and represents what IAMC views as a systematic assault on the democratic rights of India’s most vulnerable citizens, with Muslims and marginalized communities bearing a disproportionate share of the burden.
The second phase of the SIR exercise, concluded in April 2026, covered nine states and three Union Territories, including election bound West Bengal.
Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state, recorded the highest number of deletions at over 2.04 crore (20 million) representing 13.21 percent of the state’s pre-SIR electorate of 15.44 crore. Tamil Nadu followed with approximately 97 lakh (9.7 million) deletions, and West Bengal saw approximately 98.83 lakh (9 million) names removed. A third phase of the SIR is expected to cover the remaining 17 states and five Union Territories, potentially affecting tens of millions of voters.
The election bound West Bengal state has emerged as the most alarming case study of the SIR’s discriminatory impact. The state’s electorate has been reduced from 7.66 crore to approximately 6.77 crore, a staggering 11.85 percent contraction, just weeks before the state’s Assembly elections scheduled for April 23 and 29.
The geographic concentration of these deletions raises grave concerns. Murshidabad, a Muslim-majority district, recorded the highest number of adjudication-phase deletions at 4.55 lakh names. Other districts with large Muslim populations experienced similarly devastating losses: North 24 Parganas lost over 12.6 lakh names, Malda lost 4.59 lakh, and South 24 Parganas saw more than 10.91 lakh deletions. In the heavily Muslim constituencies of Shamsherganj, 74,775 names were struck off out of 1,08,400 under adjudication, while Lalgola saw 55,420 deletions out of 99,082.
Perhaps the most damning evidence of discriminatory targeting comes from Nandigram, the high-profile Assembly constituency represented by BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari. An analysis by the Sabar Institute, a Kolkata-based public policy research organization, found that Muslims accounted for 95.5 percent of all voter deletions in seven supplementary lists released by the ECI, despite constituting only approximately 25 percent of the constituency’s population.
Out of 2,826 names removed from Nandigram’s supplementary lists, 2,700 belonged to Muslim voters. In six of the seven supplementary lists analyzed, the proportion of Muslim deletions ranged from 60.9 percent to 98.7 percent. Critically, this extreme disproportion emerged specifically during the adjudication phase. During the initial enumeration phase in December 2025, Muslim deletions stood at 33.3 percent, broadly in line with their population share. It was only during the subsequent judicial adjudication that the deletions became overwhelmingly concentrated among Muslim voters, suggesting a deliberate and targeted mechanism at work.
“The SIR process has been weaponized to systematically strip Muslim citizens of their most fundamental democratic right,” said IAMC President Mohammad Jawad. “When 95.5 percent of voters deleted in a single constituency belong to one religious community that constitutes only 25 percent of the population, this is clearly electoral engineering on a communal basis. The Election Commission of India, which is constitutionally mandated to be an impartial guardian of democratic rights, has instead become an instrument of the ruling party’s agenda to diminish Muslim political participation.”
Similar patterns emerged in other constituencies. In Bhabanipur, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s own seat, 51.8 percent of Muslim voters were placed under adjudication despite Muslims comprising only 21.9 percent of the population. In Ballygunge, which has 54.3 percent Muslim voters, 76.1 percent of Muslims were subjected to adjudication, according to analysis published by AltNews.
The timing of these deletions, weeks before Assembly elections, raises unavoidable questions about the political motivations behind the exercise. In at least 44 Assembly constituencies across West Bengal, the number of deleted voters exceeds the margin of victory in the 2021 elections.
The Supreme Court of India, though seized of the matter, has declined to allow voters whose names were deleted to cast ballots in the first phase of elections on April 23. Instead, it directed that 19 appellate tribunals hear appeals, a process unlikely to restore voting rights before elections conclude. As an Indian Express editorial noted, this effectively amounts to the judicial acceptance of disenfranchisement for the current electoral cycle.
IAMC notes with deep alarm that senior BJP leaders have used the SIR exercise to advance a xenophobic and communally divisive narrative. Union Home Minister Amit Shah has framed the deletions as necessary to remove “illegal immigrants from Bangladesh and Myanmar.” BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari has stated that “Bangladeshi Muslims have no place in West Bengal.” This rhetoric conflates legitimate Indian Muslim citizens with so-called “infiltrators,” echoing the exclusionary logic of the Citizenship Amendment Act and the National Register of Citizens, both of which have been widely condemned by international human rights organizations as tools for the marginalization of Indian Muslims.
IAMC calls upon the Supreme Court of India to immediately order the restoration of voting rights for all deleted voters pending the completion of appellate proceedings. The Court must also order an independent, community-disaggregated audit of voter deletions across all states affected by the SIR to determine whether the process was conducted in a fair and non-discriminatory manner.
The Election Commission of India must immediately halt the planned third phase of the SIR until a comprehensive and transparent review of the first two phases is completed. The ECI must publish community-disaggregated data on all voter deletions and provide a full public accounting of the criteria, algorithms, and processes used during adjudication.
The international community must publicly raise concerns about the integrity of India’s electoral process and the disenfranchisement of religious minorities. The UN Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues and the Special Rapporteur on the Rights to Freedom of Peaceful Assembly should investigate the discriminatory impact of the SIR on India’s Muslim population and other marginalized communities.
