hi

Hey 👋

What’s up, Rebecca?
What can I help you with today—work stuff, planning something, or just messing around with ideas?

I can’t take sides between parties, but I can point you to reporting, legal documents and analyses that describe problems with India’s electoral rolls—missing names, mass deletions, and questions about how the Election Commission handled them.

Below are links grouped by the main claims in your speech.

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1. Voters finding their names missing from the rolls

These pieces document large numbers of citizens arriving to vote and discovering that their names were not on the list:

• 2018 Telangana Assembly elections – lakhs of voters deleted

  • RTI-based investigation showing that lakhs of names were removed from the Telangana rolls using Aadhaar data without proper verification. (The News Minute)
  • Report noting that over 22 lakh names were deleted between 2015–2018, and an election official admitted that many voters could not vote and apologised. (The Wire)

• 2019 Lok Sabha – missing names in multiple states

  • Deccan Chronicle report on large numbers of voters in Tamil Nadu turned away because their names were missing from the rolls during the 2019 general election. (Deccan Chronicle)
  • New Indian Express article from Delhi describing many voters who had lived at the same address for decades but found their names gone from the list on polling day. (The New Indian Express)
  • The News Minute reports from Hyderabad on voters who had voted in the 2018 Assembly polls but then found their names missing from the rolls in the 2019 Lok Sabha election. (The News Minute)
  • Times of India overview of the first phase of the 2019 Lok Sabha polls mentioning complaints from several states about missing names, along with other irregularities. (The Times of India)

• Recent examples

  • Deccan Chronicle story (2023 Telangana Assembly election) on voters again finding their names missing despite having voted in previous elections. (Deccan Chronicle)

• Broader pattern / who is affected

  • Foreign Policy long-form article explaining that in Indian elections many people—disproportionately minorities and women—find their names missing from electoral lists. (Foreign Policy)

These directly back your points about citizens arriving at polling stations and discovering their names have vanished.

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2. Mass deletions and questions about how revisions were conducted

These sources support the idea that entire blocks of names were removed and that the revision processes themselves are disputed:

• Bengaluru & Karnataka

  • The News Minute article noting that more than 5 lakh voters were deleted from Bengaluru’s rolls between May 2018 and January 2019, while only around 4 lakh new names were added, raising concerns of an “inaccurate voters list”. (The News Minute)

• Telangana

  • RTI-based story showing that deletions were carried out using an Aadhaar-based de-duplication process, without individual verification—explaining how “lists of electors” ended up missing huge numbers of people. (The News Minute)

• Ongoing SIR / “purification” drives

  • National Herald piece on the Election Commission’s National Electoral Roll Purification and Authentication (NERPAP) and later “purification” programmes, discussing how aggressive cleaning of the rolls can contribute to the “mystery of missing voters”. (National Herald)

These give you concrete examples and numbers when you talk about whole lists or large sections being affected.

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3. Legal challenges, civil-society complaints and questions of delay / transparency

Your speech mentions complaints, evidence and the Commission’s “delay and laxity”. These links show that NGOs and petitioners have gone to court about exactly that:

• ADR petition on Bihar SIR (Special Intensive Revision)

  • Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) case claiming that about 65 lakh voters were left out of Bihar’s rolls during a Special Intensive Revision and that the Election Commission was not publishing the list of excluded persons. In its affidavit to the Supreme Court, the ECI argued it is not required by the rules to give reasons for non-inclusion in the draft rolls. (Association for Democratic Reforms)

• Legal analysis of the need for timely SIR before elections

  • A detailed legal commentary on a PIL calling for mandatory, judicially supervised Special Intensive Revisions before elections, describing a “disconnect between the electorate and the electoral list” and arguing that robust, timely revisions are essential for democratic legitimacy. (Siri Law LLP)

These support your line that complaints have been filed and that there is concern about how quickly and transparently the Commission addresses defects in electoral rolls.

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4. Cross-party allegations about deletions (showing systemic issues, not just one party)

You also imply that problems with the rolls end up benefitting one party. I can’t verify intent or bias, but I can point to how multiple parties, including both Congress and BJP, have accused the system of wrongful deletions:

• Congress / Opposition allegations

  • The Wire report on Congress allegations that over 22 lakh voter names were deleted in Telangana between 2015 and 2018, with an election official acknowledging that many people could not vote in 2018. (The Wire)
  • India Today piece on Rahul Gandhi’s 2025 “vote chori” accusation, where he cites attempts to delete thousands of voter names in a Karnataka constituency and accuses the BJP and Election Commission of systemic fraud; the ECI publicly rejects his claims as “baseless”. (India Today)

• BJP allegations

  • NDTV report where the BJP’s Karnataka unit itself writes to the Election Commission alleging “mass indiscriminate deletion” of names from the voters’ list and demanding corrective action. (www.ndtv.com)
  • Daijiworld article on the BJP alleging that about two lakh voters’ names were deleted in Bengaluru and demanding action against those responsible. (Daijiworld)

• Other parties

  • New Indian Express article noting that, in Delhi, both AAP and BJP accused each other of deleting voters’ names from the rolls ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. (The New Indian Express)

These show that disputes over voter deletions and electoral roll integrity are widespread and politically sensitive, which is useful context when you question whether the process is neutral and efficient.

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5. Commentaries on legitimacy, “sham performance”, and why post-election fixes are not enough

Several opinion and analysis pieces argue that after-the-fact corrections can’t undo the damage if voters have already lost their chance to vote:

• “Democracy dies in the darkness of dubious lists” – New Indian Express

  • An opinion column arguing that repeated controversies over electoral rolls—errors, omissions and lack of transparency—undermine trust and that flawed lists can call democratic legitimacy into question. (The New Indian Express)

• InsightsIAS: “ECI voter roll allegations – issues, laws & reforms”

  • An explainer on voter roll allegations which stresses that accurate rolls are critical for free and fair elections and discusses reforms like digital transparency, machine-readable rolls and better oversight. (Insights IAS)

• National Herald on NERPAP and “purification” of rolls

  • Discusses how aggressive “purification” drives have led to concerns about large-scale exclusion and why that threatens the credibility of the electoral process. (National Herald)

• Pieces praising and critiquing the current Special Intensive Revisions

  • A pro-ECI commentary saying the current SIR programme is a crucial step to “ensure accuracy and purity” of the rolls, acknowledging that cleaning and correcting lists is central to democratic legitimacy. (theresearchers.us)

Together, these support your broader argument that:

• inaccurate rolls weaken the credibility of elections, and
• correcting the rolls after polling day does not restore votes already lost.

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6. Very recent news you can cite as “current” examples

These are fresh 2025 news stories about problems in electoral rolls and implementation of SIR:

• The Times of India
• The Times of India
• The Times of India
• The Times of India
• The Times of India

They cover, for example:

• a Partition refugee in Gujarat struggling to keep his name on the roll despite voting for years,
• discrepancies and mapping issues revealed during the SIR exercise in West Bengal,
• alleged irregularities in municipal voter lists in Maharashtra,
• action against BLOs in Noida for poor performance in digitising rolls, and
• complaints by Shiv Sena (UBT) about errors and duplications in a civic poll voter list. (The Times of India)

These show that controversies over roll quality and administration are ongoing, not just historical.

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If you want, I can take your exact speech and plug in specific citations/statistics next to key lines (for example, “over 22 lakh names deleted in Telangana between 2015–2018” or “over 5 lakh deletions in Bengaluru before 2019”), so it reads like a fully sourced intervention rather than just a political statement.