India opposition leaders petition Supreme Court to halt voter roll revision

Twenty‑three opposition figures, including Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge and Rahul Gandhi, sent a letter to Chief Justice of India Surya Kant on June 28 asking for an immediate suspension of the Election Commission’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls. The signatories claim the SIR is exclusionary and politically motivated, alleging that lakhs of voters—especially the poor, Dalits, Adivasis and minorities—have been wrongfully removed.

The letter cites the West Bengal assembly election, where roughly 2.7 million voters were deleted, and a judicial tribunal report that found most of a sample of examined deletions were erroneous. It also calls for a broader debate on restoring paper ballots and warns of central agencies being used to target opposition leaders.

The ruling BJP rejected the appeal, with MP Sudhanshu Trivedi accusing the opposition of “arrogance” reminiscent of the Emergency era and labeling the letter a threat to democracy. Opposition leaders defended the move as a necessary step to protect democratic institutions.