Dissecting the SIR Ploy and Its Portents for India- Part 2

PART II — The Myth of “Foreigners” and the Mechanics of Deletion

Democracies do not erode only through loud decrees; they also weaken through categories, classifications, and the power to decide who belongs and who does not. Throughout the world, the language of national protection has often been used to redraw political boundaries within the citizenry itself. When suspicion becomes a governing principle, the administrative state turns into an instrument of exclusion.

This is the second part of the full transcript of Dr. Parakala Prabhakar’s CGS Memorial Discourse at Thrissur on 21.01.2026

The government is now deciding who should be a voter. It is no longer the voter who decides who should be the government. We have reached that stage because of SIR.

Let me now turn to the justification offered. We are told this is merely a “clean-up.” A clean-up based on what? Based on what they call S-A-D-D — Shifted, Absent, Dead, or Duplicate. Very well. I do not want anyone in these four categories to remain on the voters’ list.

I agree with that completely.

But is that what has actually happened?

Let us examine the Bihar experience.

We are told there are “foreigners,” infiltrators, who are influencing who becomes Prime Minister, Chief Minister, Member of Parliament, or MLA. We are told SIR is about removing these foreigners.

So let us take the foreigners’ question first.

If there is one place in India where the issue of foreigners has been the most politically explosive, it is Assam, isn’t it? There was a massive agitation. Young leaders rose to become chief ministers and ministers on that issue. Governments were formed on the strength of movements against the presence of foreigners. There were Foreigners’ Tribunals. There was the NRC exercise.

Yet, when SIR is rolled out across the country, Assam does not have SIR. Assam has only the routine SR — the regular revision.

Why?

If your intention is genuinely to weed out foreigners, your first and most logical effort should be in Assam.

Why are you not doing it in Assam? That is the question.

Because when the NRC exercise was conducted earlier, around 19 lakh people were identified as lacking proper documents. Out of those 19 lakh, about 7 lakh were Muslims and 12 lakh were Hindus.

Now you understand why Assam does not have SIR. Because this is not about foreigners in general. It is about which people are considered expendable. Today, the state seems to divide people into “our people” and “not our people.” That appears to be the underlying logic.

So Assam has only SR, not SIR — even while the rhetoric elsewhere is about removing foreigners.

And consider this: the present government, which is now conducting SIR, has been in power for about eleven years. In all these years, with all the machinery of the state at its disposal, it has officially reported deporting only about 15,000 foreigners.

Fifteen thousand.

That is the scale, despite all the talk.

And there is another striking detail: in recent years, among those deported, the largest number have reportedly been from Nigeria, not Bangladesh. Bangladesh comes second or third.

So where is this massive influx of foreigners supposedly distorting Indian elections?

Let us return to Bihar.

Around 67 lakh names were deleted. Citizens went to court and asked: Who are these people? What are the reasons for deleting them? We want the full list, with reasons.

The Election Commission repeatedly refused to publish a consolidated list along with reasons for deletion. But the Supreme Court persisted. It insisted. After repeated directions — three, four, five times — the Election Commission finally agreed to release the information.

But even then, it did not provide a consolidated, searchable list. Instead, it adopted a very clever method: the list of deleted voters from each booth would be displayed only in that booth. If you belong to one booth, you can see only that list. You cannot access the list from another booth.

But citizens in this country are vigilant. Some of them painstakingly went booth by booth, collected the data, and compiled it — much as civil society had earlier done in the Electoral Bonds case.

And what did they find?

Not a single name — not one — where the official reason for deletion was “foreigner.”

So what exactly was this “clean-up” about? It was not about foreigners.

Let me give you the arithmetic.

In Bihar, the total number of objections filed was around 3.75 lakh. Objections can be filed by individuals claiming that someone has shifted away, no longer resides there, and so on. Out of these 3.75 lakh objections, only 1,087 cited “foreigner” as the reason.

Out of 3.75 lakh, only 1,087.

After initial scrutiny, the Election Commission found merit worth examining in only 390 of those 1,087 cases.

Now look at how the numbers narrow further.

Out of those 390, only 76 were Muslim names.

The region most often associated with suspicion of foreign infiltration in Bihar is Seemanchal. Out of those 76 names, only 10 were from Seemanchal. Out of those 10, only 5 were Muslim names. Out of those five, two were already dead.

Which leaves three.

Out of 67 lakh deletions, they could identify only three Muslim names where citizenship was even a possible issue.

So are these deletions really about foreigners? No.

Are they about Bangladeshi infiltration? No. Your own deportation figures show you have deported more Nigerians than Bangladeshis.

So what is this really about?

Now let us turn to duplication. We are told there were large numbers of fake and duplicate names. Yet the Election Commission has already admitted that, at least in Bihar, it does not have a reliable, usable de-duplication software system. In other words, systematic de-duplication was not even possible.

And yet we see bizarre patterns: in one place, 509 people are shown as residing at a single address. In another, 409 people. Is it humanly possible for 409 or 509 people to live in one house?

An investigative journalist like Venkitesh would naturally go to such an address — a place reportedly called Pippra — to see what kind of house accommodates 509 voters. When journalists went there, they could not even find the house. A non-existent house had 509 voters registered at its address — people of all castes, communities, religions, and age groups.

Who are these people?

There were also entries with house number 0. Names that were pure gibberish. Entries where the father’s or husband’s name was written as “ABCDFGH.” Perhaps the data-entry operator got tired midway and typed nonsense. In several entries, the father’s or husband’s name was listed as “Election Commission of India.”

So yes, there are absurdities. There are duplications. There are impossible addresses. But those do not appear to be the real targets of deletion.

Meanwhile, real people were marked as dead. Some of them went all the way to the Supreme Court and stood there in person, saying, “Sir, we are alive.” In West Bengal, ground reports — including one in The Hindu — documented people who received notices saying they had shifted away, even though they were standing in their own homes, unsure where they were supposed to have gone.

A retired Naval Chief reportedly received such a notice. Amartya Sen received a notice asking him to prove his eligibility to vote. This is a man who, despite working for decades at institutions such as the London School of Economics, Oxford, Cambridge, Yale, and Princeton, has retained his Indian citizenship and comes back periodically to cast his vote.

And today, he is being asked: are you eligible to vote?

Then we are told by the Election Commission that this is nothing new — that similar exercises were conducted in 2003. They say this is routine, that SIR has happened before.

I was a voter in 2003–2004. I am sure most of you here — except perhaps a few younger people — were also voters then. Tell me: did anyone ask you to go and prove your citizenship in order to remain on the voter rolls? Did you have to submit fresh documents to establish your eligibility?

I certainly did not.

The third and final part of the series will follow tomorrow. Read the first part here. Check this space for more!