The recent uproar over mass voter deletions in Bengaluru and the nationwide Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls exposed the hollowness of the hallowed Indian democracy. These exercises have disproportionately targeted Dalits, OBCs, Muslims, migrants, and the poor, those most opposed to the RSS-BJP agenda. Beneath the bureaucracy lies a strategy of disenfranchisement, part of a fascist assault on people. These are not isolated accidents. They are part of a sinister attempt to erase all semblance of democracy, silence dissent, and disenfranchise millions of citizens who do not fit into the Hindu Rashtra ideated by the RSS-BJP. What is unfolding in front of us is a crumbling of the electoral process under the saffron hammer.
The Bengaluru Scandal
In Bengaluru, the scale of deletion is staggering. Between 2018 and 2023, nearly 10 lakh voters were struck off rolls in the city. In Mahadevapura constituency, around 1 lakh fake voters allegedly exist, raising question over BJP’s victory there. In constituencies like Shivajinagar, the Archdiocese of Bangalore reported that out of 9,195 missing voters, around 8,000 belonged to Dalit, OBC, and Muslim communities, a shocking 87% of deletions targeting marginalized groups. The official reason most often cited was “S” (Shifted/Change of Residence), which accounted for a majority of removals. But countless residents still lived at their registered addresses and had never been contacted by Booth Level Officers. Verification visits were skipped, notices were never issued, and deletions continued even after final rolls were published in blatant violation of Election Commission of India (ECI) rules, which prohibit such action within six months of elections.
This is by design. Bengaluru voter deletions is a dress rehearsal in engineering electoral outcomes by suppressing communities that resist the fascist project of the RSS-BJP.
SIR: A Nationwide Assault
In the background, the Election Commission unleashed the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) across India. The results were catastrophic. In Bihar, over 65 lakh names were deleted in 2025 alone. Nationally, estimates suggest the SIR process has struck off more than 2 crore voters across states. These are not “ghost voters” or “duplicates”. They are overwhelmingly the poor, migrants, minorities, and vulnerable groups with weak access to documentation.
The Supreme Court was forced to intervene. On August 14, it ordered the ECI to publish district and booth-wise lists of every single deleted name and the reason for deletion. The Court also directed the Commission to accept Aadhaar and EPIC cards as sufficient proof for restoration, after reports emerged of entire villages being wiped from rolls due to lack of paperwork. Nobel laureate Amartya Sen warned that the SIR risked disenfranchising India’s poorest citizens en masse, calling it a “grave democratic danger.”
Meanwhile, Amit Shah justified the SIR by claiming it was necessary to “weed out infiltrators”, a chilling dog whistle that equates Muslim citizens and migrants with ‘Bangladeshis’. The attacks on Bengalis has also seen a steep rise in its aftermath.
The link between Bengaluru’s voter deletions and SIR is unmistakable: both are crafted to shrink democratic rights by excluding voices that challenge the RSS’s project. In Bengaluru, deletions disproportionately hit Dalits, OBCs, and Muslims. In Bihar, it was the poor, migrants, and marginalized. The pattern is consistent! Strike at the weakest, silence the opposition, and tilt the playing field in favour of the ruling dispensation.
The RSS strives for homogeneity. That means stripping vulnerable communities of their voice, be it vote or otherwise, and their legitimacy. What better way than to hide behind the bureaucratic mask of “roll revision”, a process technical enough to be inaccessible to the public, yet devastating in its consequences?
This is not just voter deletion; it is voter selection. A fascist state does not need to abolish elections outright; it merely ensures that only “approved” citizens are allowed to vote, while millions are excluded through red tape, surveillance, and targeted deletions. That is the precise trajectory we are witnessing.
Make no mistake: these are not random excesses, nor isolated mistakes. They are pillars of a fascist onslaught being waged on India’s democracy. Fascism rarely begins with their armies on the streets; it begins with the quiet erasure of rights, the slow suffocation of institutions, and the steady disenfranchisement of those who refuse to fall in line. Taking away voter rights, demolition of houses, state-sponsored violence: all are the characteristics of a fascist state. The RSS’s dream of a Hindu Rashtra requires precisely this: to push Muslims. Dalits, Adivasis, the poor, and dissenting voices out of the political fold altogether, making them non-citizens in their own land.
If the right to vote is the foundation of constitutional democracy, then the deliberate deletion of voters is nothing less than a coup. The RSS-BJP regime, cloaked in bureaucratic language and official procedure, is carrying out a systematic theft of hard-won people’s rights. Fascism cannot be reasoned with, it must be resisted. Every democratic voice must unite to expose and fight these authoritarian manoeuvres.
