NEW DELHI: A key opposition Indian politician has threatened legal action against the election commission after millions of people were struck off electoral rolls, the latest flashpoint over a contentious voter clean-up drive.
A sweeping voter registration overhaul — known as the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) — meant to remove ineligible voters but which critics say is skewed against marginalised and minority communities, kicked off last year in several states and territories.
Many of these regions voted Thursday to elect local governments, with two other states slated to go to polls later this month.
That includes West Bengal, a state with roughly 100 million people led by Mamata Banerjee of the Trinamool Congress party, where it has run into furious opposition.
West Bengal is also a crucial election battleground, which Prime Minister Narendara Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has never governed.
Move to court
Banerjee, the state’s chief minister, accused India’s Election Commission of “working at the behest of the BJP” to strike off her supporters from the state’s electoral rolls. “We will move court again to resist the exclusion of names,” she told her supporters at an election rally on Wednesday.
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