After NRC failed to give results, SIR taken up to exclude minorities: Prashant Bhushan

After the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam failed to give the BJP the results it wanted, the Modi government decided to conduct Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls to exclude Muslims and Christians from the voters’ list, Senior Advocate Prashant Bhushan said, adding that there’s no semblance of independence left in any of the constitutional bodies.

“The ECI today acts like an advisor to the government, makes no bones about it, does not even try to defend itself from the charge,” Mr. Bhushan added while speaking at a seminar on delimitation, the Women’s Reservation Bill, and SIR organised by the Association for Protection of Civil Rights on Sunday. 

He argued that after coming to power, the BJP’s larger political agenda had been to establish a “Hindu rashtra” and reduce Muslims and Christians to second-class citizens. During the NRC exercise in Assam, he said, people were asked to produce documents proving citizenship, resulting in nearly 20 lakh people being left out because they were too poor to possess the required papers. However, NRC did not politically benefit the BJP because nearly 70% of those excluded were Hindus and 30% Muslims, he added.  

ECI’s invention

Speaking about SIR in West Bengal, he said the ECI came up with a new trick — logical discrepancy. “The ECI flagged around 60 lakh voters under the category of logical discrepancies, citing reasons such as spelling differences and variations in parents’ names. Logical discrepancy is not written anywhere in any rule. It was an invention of the Election Commission,” he said. Mr. Bhushan alleged that more than two-thirds — nearly 70% — of those flagged under “logical discrepancies” were Muslims. 

The senior advocate also questioned the ECI’s refusal to fully count VVPAT slips alongside EVM votes. “Absolute dishonesty. Our whole electoral democracy has been made into a farce.”  Referring further to Form 17C and Form 20 data, which record booth-wise voting details, Mr. Bhushan alleged that these were not being transparently disclosed. He claimed that without VVPAT counting, there was no reliable way to independently verify whether EVMs had been manipulated. 

Women’s bill was a ruse

On the Women’s Reservation Bill, Mr. Bhushan alleged that the government deliberately linked implementation to the post-2026 Census and delimitation exercise instead of enforcing it from the next Lok Sabha election itself. “This was just a ruse to show that they have passed women’s reservation without actually implementing it,” he said. 

Turning to delimitation, Mr. Bhushan argued that southern States could lose parliamentary representation because of lower population growth compared to northern States. He also accused the government of using delimitation for political “gerrymandering”, referring to changes in Assam’s constituency boundaries. “What the BJP did is called gerrymandering — a totally pernicious, malicious practice,” he said. He further said that the Delimitation Commission itself lacked independence, calling the situation an “all-round onslaught on electoral democracy.”  

Mr. Bhushan said citizens could no longer rely solely on institutions. “The judiciary has also largely caved in,” he said, urging citizens to organise peaceful protests and mass movements on issues including unemployment, privatisation, and labour rights.