An estimated 130 million names have been deleted from India’s voter rolls during a revision that began in June of last year, NPR reported, in what critics call the largest disenfranchisement in the country’s history.
The estimate comes from elections specialist Yogendra Yadav, a prominent critic of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party has nonetheless cited the figure in defending the revision. The rolls previously listed about 980 million names.
In one community living beneath a New Delhi flyover, residents said about 500 adults were removed. “The government is choosing the people that support them,” said a resident named Kanchan, who uses one name.
Sources: NPR. Thee Arizona Times uses AI-assisted reporting reviewed against the sources listed.
Photo: Ankur Banerjee from Guildford, United Kingdom / CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
