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

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 against Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government.

The Special Intensive Revision (SIR) has struck off voters for reasons from “logical discrepancies” to being recorded as dead. Prasad, one of 4.2 million Delhi voters removed under draft rolls published by the poll body on August 31, forgoes his 250-rupee ($2.63) daily wage — which supports his family of four — to fight the error.

“I panicked when I heard about it,” he said. “Since then I’ve been going everywhere to prove that I’m alive.”

“I told them I voted in the last assembly and general elections and have been voting for 35 years, but nobody listens,” Prasad said.

The deletions have triggered near-daily protests in New Delhi and elsewhere, met with force by police. Opposition parties and youth groups, including the Cockroach Janta Party — whose leaders’ detention was extended by a court on October 19 — demand the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, alleging the revision favours Modi’s BJP. Both the commission and the BJP deny this.

The commission says the lists included 28 million dead, 63 million relocated and 30 million untraceable, and that wrongly deleted voters can file claims and appeal before the rolls are finalised. After weeks of protests, it has ordered fresh checks in some states, including Delhi.