India’s Supreme Court Demands Answers as Protests Grow Over Voter Roll Deletions

India’s Supreme Court on Monday ordered the government and the Election Commission to explain a sweeping revision of the country’s voter rolls, as protests spread across the world’s largest democracy over accusations that eligible citizens are being wrongly removed.

The court issued notices to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government, the commission and Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, saying it expected them to respond clearly and transparently, the Guardian reported. The petitions before the court call the commission’s credibility into question and seek an independent inquiry into how the process was run. Another hearing is scheduled for next week.

The exercise, known as the Special Intensive Revision, began last year in the eastern state of Bihar and has since expanded to most states and federal territories. It requires voters to produce documents showing they are eligible to remain on the lists. So far it has led to about 130 million names being removed, according to the Guardian.

The Election Commission says the revision is needed to clear out duplicate, dead and ineligible entries and to make sure legitimate voters stay registered. The government has also described the revision as a way to remove what it calls illegal infiltrators, Common Dreams reported, and Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party and the commission deny any political motive.

Critics say the document requirements are confusing and hard to meet for poorer people and others who lack older government records, and that the process could exclude legitimate voters, NPR reported. Opposition parties led by Congress accuse the commission of favoring the ruling party, and protesters have said the revision appeared to target Muslim voters, according to Common Dreams. In West Bengal, about 9.1 million names, roughly a tenth of the electorate, were removed ahead of the state election in April, the Christian Science Monitor reported, citing Election Commission data. The BJP went on to win the state, and Suvendu Adhikari became its first BJP chief minister, Republic World reported.

Public anger grew after the Indian Express newspaper reported that decisions on the revision had been taken despite objections from two of the commission’s three members, according to the legal news site Bar & Bench. Demonstrations have since spread to Mumbai, Delhi and other cities, led in part by a youth movement known as the Cockroach movement, whose protests over the summer forced the resignation of India’s education minister in July. In New Delhi, police forced hundreds of protesters into vehicles, Common Dreams reported.

Kumar was selected to lead the commission by a panel headed by Modi. Under Indian law, changes by the commission require a majority vote of its members, which makes internal disagreements significant.

The dispute goes to the heart of how the country runs its elections, in which hundreds of millions of people vote. Menaka Guruswamy, a lawyer for one of the petitioners, told the Guardian that voters had been deleted in the largest democracy and that the free and fair elections Indians grew up with were no longer the case, Common Dreams reported.