The Congress Working Committee (CWC) on Tuesday demanded the restoration of 130 million voters deleted from the electoral rolls, a halt to the special intensive revision (SIR) and the resignation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Party president Mallikarjun Kharge, who chaired the meeting, said complete data on every major change made to the rolls must be made public, according to Hindustan Times.
Speaking after the meeting, general secretary KC Venugopal announced a massive agitation at state and district levels in coordination with allies in the INDIA bloc. He said the party would reach out to all voters whose names had been struck off the list. The meeting marked a shift in Congress strategy, from attacking Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar alone to holding the prime minister responsible for the “fraud exercise to destroy democracy of the country.”
“This is not the game of Gyanesh Kumar. He is only a tool. Whenever dictators lose the confidence of common voters, they will try to find special ways to stay in power. This exercise (SIR) could not happen without the concurrence of Modi and Amit Shah. It was done under clear directions of Gyanesh Kumar’s masters. The PM should have intervened and stopped this. PM should resign as it was his moral responsibility to stop this exercise,” Venugopal said.
Congress has consistently opposed the SIR and tried to portray it as a way of fixing the mandate. On Tuesday, Rahul Gandhi, the leader of the opposition in the Lok Sabha, likened the party’s fight against the exercise to the freedom movement. He recalled the Congress session in Lahore in 1929, when the party adopted the goal of Purna Swaraj, or complete independence. He also reminded the CWC that the party’s strategy was both to oppose and to resist.
Kharge said “independent and time-bound inquiries must be conducted wherever evidence of serious discrepancies emerges.” He also demanded that voters whose names had been removed be fully informed and given an opportunity to appeal. Political parties, he said, should receive the electoral rolls and relevant data in a simple format and in good time. He further called for transparency over critical data and decisions related to the election process, so that no party has grounds to claim that information is being withheld.
The SIR process does involve booth-level agents of political parties, with whom data on deletions in the draft roll is shared.
An analysis of SIR deletions by constituency by HT found no correlation with election outcomes, and some deletions were caused by death and migration. Even so, the exclusion of millions of voters from the draft rolls has caused public anxiety and anger. Delhi, for instance, saw a 32.8 percent decline from the 14,510,299 names on its rolls as of June 2026.
Last week, the Indian Express revealed that two election commissioners had disagreed with some of the decisions, and that the central database of electors was not accessible to the on-ground officers tasked with adding and deleting names. The revelations caused a stir. The Election Commission has since clarified that all decisions were unanimous, based on the majority, and has modified the SIR process to reduce inconvenience to voters.
In his opening speech, Kharge launched a vitriolic attack on both Modi and Kumar, calling the chief election commissioner a “puppet” of the ruling dispensation.
“History bears witness that ten years ago, this very Prime Minister devastated India’s economy with the decision of “demonetization.” And now, ten years later, he is destroying our robust democracy through a conspiracy of “vote-demonetisation” (disenfranchisement),” Kharge said. He was referring to the Modi government’s 2016 decision to invalidate high-value currency notes in a bid to tackle unaccounted wealth, or black money.
“The poor bear the brunt of all his flawed policies. During demonetization, the poor stood in queues; with this move to disenfranchise voters, the poor are being pushed out of the queue altogether. I know that the poor possess only one source of power: their vote. We will not let that be snatched away under any circumstances,” the Congress president said. He argued that the vote is the greatest weapon for the poor, Dalits, the deprived and the exploited sections of society. “Modi ji wants to snatch away this right, but we will not allow it to happen.”
Recalling Babasaheb Ambedkar’s statement that the right to vote was the most fundamental element of democracy, Kharge alleged that the opposite was happening in India.
“The protector has turned into the predator. The very entity empowered by the Constitution—tasked with being the guardian of the people’s vote—has become a plunderer of votes. How can the nation place its trust in a Chief Election Commissioner whom even his own colleagues do not trust?” Kharge said, referring to the report on differences within the poll body.
Comparing Modi with former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, who lowered the voting age from 21 to 18, Kharge said: “In contrast, we have Prime Minister Modi, who is so resentful of Gen Z that he has hatched a conspiracy to disenfranchise the youth. He quietly altered the rules regarding ‘Form 6’. This is entirely illegal.”
He was referring to the SIR declaration added to Form 6, which asks applicants for enrolment whether their own names, or those of their parents and grandparents, appeared in a previous roll. Because the form sought such details, it is believed that it could cause problems for first-time voters.
“They failed to provide jobs, and now they seek to deny the right to vote as well. They are gripped by the fear that the youth will ask questions and eventually oust them from power. However, this right was not granted as an act of charity; millions have made sacrifices for it. No matter how many conspiracies people like Modi and Shah may hatch, the Congress will not let them succeed. Democracy and the right to vote are our legacy—nurtured by our blood and sweat. We will not allow any dictator to destroy it,” Kharge added.
Addressing the media, Venugopal said: “We are going to aggressively resist with peaceful demonstrations across the country. Congress wants massive agitation with the help of all political parties.” He indicated that the plan would be discussed at a meeting of the INDIA bloc called for Wednesday.
