'Be very careful! The Census operation has begun. The enumerators may insist that you mention your religion as Hindu. Never do that. Mention Sarna as your religion. Sarna is the identity of the Adivasis. We must not lose that.’ Even the most casual observer can hear the campaign’s resonance across Jharkhand.

The longstanding demand of Adivasis in Jharkhand and neighbouring states for a separate Sarna code in the Census has acquired renewed urgency with the Union government’s proposal to abolish the ‘Other Religions and Persuasions’ (ORP) category (Code 7). Many Adivasi organisations view this proposal as an extension of demands advanced by the RSS and allied organisations to ‘delist’ Adivasi Christians from the Scheduled Tribe category.

As an Adivasi activist remarked at a street corner meeting in Dumka in mid-May, the move is “an attack on Adivasis who have increasingly been asserting their distinct identity.” In his view, the government is not only rejecting the demand for recognition of Sarna but also eliminating the limited space for indigenous religious self-identification available under the ORP category.

Coupled with the campaign for delisting, the proposal is widely seen as an attempt to weaken both Adivasi identity and constitutional protections. Consequently, the demand for a separate Sarna code has become a broader assertion of ‘Adivasiyat’, or Adivasi peoplehood. The campaign has found support beyond Jharkhand. A massive rally held on 23 May in Jashpur, Chhattisgarh, against delisting echoed the demand.

In contrast, organisations aligned with the government have intensified efforts to push Adivasis to join the broader Hindu fold. On 24 May, the Janjati Suraksha Manch (JSM) organised a rally in New Delhi under the slogan: ‘Tu main ek rakt, vanvasi-gramvasi-nagarvasi, hum sab Bharatvasi (you and I are one blood, forest-dwellers, villagers, city-dwellers, we are all Indians).’

The use of ‘vanvasi’ — long promoted by Hindu nationalist organisations — instead of Adivasi is significant, as it rejects the indigenous status implied by Adivasi. Home minister Amit Shah, the principal speaker at the event, also consistently used the term vanvasi.

Adivasi apprehensions are, therefore, not unfounded. The proposal to abolish ORP, combined with the campaign to delist and the refusal to recognise a Sarna code, is a deliberate attempt to reshape the politics of identity, representation and power.

Let us look at the demographic background. According to the 2011 Census, about 79.4 lakh Indians — 0.66 per cent of the national population — were enumerated under ORP. The largest concentrations were in Jharkhand (42.4 lakh), Madhya Pradesh (6 lakh), Chhattisgarh (4.9 lakh), Odisha (4.8 lakh) and Arunachal Pradesh (3.6 lakh).

Nationally, Sarna constitutes the largest indigenous religion within the ORP category. Nearly 62.5 per cent of all ORP adherents identified as Sarna followers in 2011. If followers of Sari Dharam, who share the same broad community base (specifically Santal), are included, the proportion is even higher. The next largest categories — Gond/Gondi and Sari Dharma (considered separately) — accounted for only 12.9 per cent and 6.4 per cent, respectively.

The political import of these figures is most evident in Jharkhand. The state recorded 42.4 lakh persons under ORP, representing 12.8 per cent of its population. More than 41.3 lakh identified as Sarna, constituting 97.5 per cent of the state’s ORP population. Among Jharkhand’s Adivasis, Sarna followers substantially outnumber those who identify as Hindu.

This demographic reality has major political implications. Regional parties such as the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) have derived much of their legitimacy from questions of identity and self-determination. The demand for a separate Sarna code has emerged as one of the most visible expressions of this assertion. Indeed, identifying with Sarna in Jharkhand is a feature well reflected in the 1991 and 2001 Census.

The continuing electoral success of the JMM-led coalition, despite the broader expansion of the BJP across eastern and central India, demonstrates the enduring political strength of Adivasi identity. In this context, abolishing ORP would do far more than eliminate a census category. If Sarna followers are compelled to identify as Hindus or any other recognised religion, their collective visibility in official statistics will disappear.

Such a move would strengthen the claim that Adivasis are part of the Hindu fold while weakening the demographic basis of political mobilisation around a distinct indigenous identity. In electoral terms, this will work to the BJP’s advantage.

The implications extend beyond Jharkhand. West Bengal — where the BJP has made significant gains among the Adivasis, who share a common cultural, linguistic and clan membership with Jharkhand’s Adivasis — also has a substantial ORP population. According to the 2011 Census, nearly 10 lakh people in the state were enumerated under ORP, with Sarna and Sari Dharam followers comprising the majority.

This points to a contradiction in the BJP’s tribal strategy. While the party has expanded its electoral support among Adivasis, many of these communities continue to maintain religious identities outside Hinduism. The Jharkhand experience demonstrates how demands for religious recognition can evolve into broader claims for cultural autonomy, political representation and indigenous rights, thereby challenging projects of cultural assimilation and political absolutism.

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Their diversity also creates a potential faultline in Adivasi politics. A movement centred on Sarna can be perceived and presented as just one regional stream of indigenous assertion rather than representing the collective aspirations of all tribal peoples. While Sarna has become the principal symbol of indigenous religious assertion in Jharkhand, Odisha, West Bengal, Bihar and parts of Chhattisgarh, it is not the only indigenous faith tradition. The northeast presents a very different landscape.

In Arunachal Pradesh, nearly 90 per cent of the ORP population identifies with Doni Polo. In Manipur, more than 95 per cent identify as Sanamahi followers. Indigenous communities in Meghalaya follow the Khasi, Niamtre and Songsarek traditions, while Nagaland’s ORP population is dominated by the Heraka tradition. In Sikkim, many indigenous communities identify with Yumasam and related traditions.

These religions are rooted in distinct linguistic, cultural and historical contexts and have evolved independently of the Sarna movement. Consequently, Sarna may not automatically serve as a common religious identity for indigenous peoples across India.

The JSM gathering in New Delhi saw substantial participation from northeast tribal groups. While publicly presented as a celebration of ‘one tribal culture’ and ‘national unity’, it also demonstrated that different tribal communities can be mobilised through frameworks other than indigenous religious assertion.

The strategic significance of such mobilisation is its capacity to accentuate regional distinctions within India’s tribal population. If Sarna is portrayed (and seen) as primarily a Jharkhand-centric project, with communities from the northeast pursuing their own separate trajectories, the prospects for a unified indigenous political platform become considerably weaker. A broad movement for indigenous religious recognition, stretching from Jharkhand to Arunachal Pradesh, would pose a powerful challenge to projects of cultural homogenisation.

The debate over ORP, therefore, concerns much more than census enumeration. It is fundamentally a struggle over how Adivasis will be seen and counted in the Indian nation state. The proposed abolition of ORP advances two interconnected objectives: the absorption of indigenous communities into the Hindu fold and the fragmentation of a possible pan-Adivasi political identity by accentuating regional, ethnic and religious differences among India’s tribal communities.

Irrespective of whether diverse Adivasi traditions can (or should) be brought together within a broader framework of indigenous solidarity, the issue of the religious identity of Adivasis cannot be seen as an exclusive Adivasi concern. It should concern all practitioners of democracy.

Kumar Rana is a research activist

For much of the past year, India and Bangladesh have been attempting to repair a relationship shaken by one of the most consequential political upheavals in South Asia in recent decades. 

Following the collapse of Sheikh Hasina's autocratic government in August 2024 and the subsequent rise of a new political order in Dhaka, both countries have gradually moved from mutual suspicion toward cautious engagement.

Diplomatic contacts have resumed. Official rhetoric has softened. After months of uncertainty, New Delhi and Dhaka appeared to recognize an inescapable reality: geography leaves them little choice but to cooperate.

Yet while diplomats work to rebuild trust, events along the 4,100-km border are increasingly pulling the relationship in the opposite direction.

A growing dispute over alleged 'push-ins' — attempts to force individuals across the border into Bangladesh outside established repatriation procedures — has emerged as the most immediate challenge to the fragile thaw. The issue now threatens to overshadow efforts by both governments to stabilise ties after nearly two years of diplomatic strain.

The controversy intensified this week after West Bengal's new BJP chief minister Suvendu Adhikari claimed that around 4,800 people had already been sent from India to Bangladesh and that another 836 individuals were being held in detention centres near the border awaiting deportation.

Speaking at a BJP programme, Adhikari said Indian authorities had begun removing alleged illegal immigrants who did not qualify under the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA)."We have started the work of deporting infiltrators who do not fall under the purview of CAA," he was quoted as saying by Indian media.

He further claimed that holding facilities had been established in border districts and indicated that additional deportations would take place in the coming days.The remarks immediately drew attention in Bangladesh, where officials have repeatedly objected to what they describe as unilateral attempts to send people across the frontier without prior verification or diplomatic coordination.

Bangladesh's response was swift but revealing. "There has been zero push-in," Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) spokesperson Lt-Col Abu Hasanat Mohammad Mahmud Azam said on Monday, 8 June. The statement did not deny that attempts had occurred. Rather, it reflected the BGB's position that none had succeeded.

According to Azam, Bangladeshi border guards had foiled approximately 30 push-in attempts within the previous 72 hours alone. While he could not provide an exact number of individuals involved, his comments underscored the scale of the recent activity along the border.

The issue is now expected to dominate discussions at the 57th director general-level conference between the BGB and India's Border Security Force (BSF), which opened in New Delhi on Monday.

Bangladesh's delegation is being led by BGB director-general Maj-Gen Mohammad Ashrafuzzaman Siddiqui, while BSF director-general Praveen Kumar heads the Indian side.

On the eve of the meeting, Bangladesh's home adviser Salahuddin Ahmed signalled that the issue would be raised directly with Indian authorities. "We will, Inshallah, resist all attempts of border push-ins. However, these issues should primarily be resolved through diplomatic discussions," he told reporters in Dhaka.

The dispute goes beyond competing numbers. At its core lies a disagreement over how undocumented migration should be managed between two countries that share one of the world's longest land borders.

Bangladesh has consistently maintained that it does not oppose the repatriation of its citizens if their nationality is properly established. What it rejects is the practice of returning individuals without verification through established bilateral mechanisms.

Dhaka's position is straightforward: if India believes someone is a Bangladeshi national residing illegally in India, that claim should be processed through existing verification channels before any repatriation takes place.

Officials argue that anything else risks creating legal uncertainty, humanitarian complications and disputes over nationality. The issue has become increasingly contentious because of conflicting claims about who is actually being sent toward the border.

Bangladesh has previously alleged that many individuals pushed toward its territory were later identified as Indian citizens. According to Bangladeshi officials, approximately 2,479 people were pushed toward the border between mid-2025 and early 2026, with a significant number subsequently determined not to be Bangladeshi nationals.

India, meanwhile, has emphasised that it continues to use formal mechanisms. Indian authorities have said approximately 2,680 suspected Bangladeshi nationals were referred to Dhaka for nationality verification through established channels.

The widening gap between official procedures and developments on the ground is increasingly becoming a diplomatic problem.

The dispute cannot be separated from domestic politics inside India. For years, concerns over undocumented migration from Bangladesh have been a central theme in the BJP's political messaging, particularly in states bordering Bangladesh. The issue has shaped electoral campaigns, informed policy debates and become intertwined with broader discussions about citizenship and national identity.

Initially, much of that politics revolved around Assam, where the National Register of Citizens became one of the defining political projects of the BJP era. More recently, however, the focus has shifted toward West Bengal, where immigration remains a potent political issue and where the BJP has made significant electoral gains.

That shift matters.

Political success creates political expectations. Having campaigned heavily on promises to address illegal immigration, the BJP faces growing pressure to demonstrate tangible results. For critics in Bangladesh, the recent increase in alleged push-in attempts appears less like routine immigration enforcement and more like an extension of domestic political messaging.

Whether that interpretation is accurate or not, perception increasingly matters. The problem for New Delhi is that border incidents are colliding with larger strategic objectives.

When Sheikh Hasina's government fell in 2024, India lost its closest and most dependable partner in South Asia. For more than a decade, New Delhi had built much of its Bangladesh policy around a single political relationship. The sudden transition left Indian policymakers navigating an unfamiliar and less predictable environment.

The months that followed were marked by diplomatic caution. Political trust declined. Trade slowed. Anti-India sentiment, never entirely absent from Bangladeshi politics, resurfaced with renewed intensity.

The recent improvement in relations emerged not from sentiment but necessity.

India depends on Bangladesh for connectivity to its northeastern states and for regional stability along a strategically sensitive frontier. Bangladesh, meanwhile, relies heavily on India for trade, energy cooperation and access to regional markets.

Neither country can afford prolonged estrangement. Yet every reported push-in incident complicates efforts to rebuild trust.

In Bangladesh, the issue resonates far beyond migration policy. It touches on questions of sovereignty, national dignity and the nature of the bilateral relationship itself. Reports of attempted push-ins reinforce a narrative held by many Bangladeshis that India continues to approach its smaller neighbour from a position of entitlement rather than partnership.

That perception carries consequences.

Bangladesh's political landscape has changed significantly since 2024. The country that emerged after the fall of the Hasina government is more politically pluralistic, more openly nationalistic and increasingly determined to diversify its international relationships.

The BNP-led administration has sought to pursue a more autonomous foreign policy while expanding engagement with China, the United States and other international partners. Although India remains indispensable, Dhaka is no longer willing to define its foreign policy primarily through its relationship with New Delhi.

That reality presents India with a strategic choice. If New Delhi seeks a stable relationship with post-Hasina Bangladesh, it will need to recognise that coercive border practices — whether real or perceived — carry costs that extend far beyond migration management. Every disputed push-in strengthens those within Bangladesh who advocate greater distance from India and reduces the political space available for cooperation.

The irony is that both countries ultimately want the same outcome: a secure border, orderly migration management and a stable bilateral relationship.

Achieving those goals requires more than diplomatic statements. It requires consistency between what governments say across negotiating tables and what happens along the frontier.

The current diplomatic thaw remains tentative and reversible. The border dispute has become its first major test.

If India and Bangladesh fail to resolve the issue through established legal and diplomatic mechanisms, the frontier may once again become the place where broader ambitions for cooperation come undone. For two neighbours bound by geography, economics and security interests, that would represent a setback neither side can afford.

Faisal Mahmud is a Dhaka-based journalist

The election results from West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Assam and Puducherry, on the surface, are a boost for the BJP and its style of electioneering — brash, in-your-face, communal, and, to top it, broadly free of restrictions that would apply to other parties under the Election Commission’s model code of conduct.

If Assam is seen as a predictable BJP victory and Tamil Nadu as a favourable BJP result in that a strong anti-BJP voice in the leadership of M.K. Stalin’s DMK has been reined in, then West Bengal is the prize that would make the BJP stand out and the Opposition cry foul. The state that has resisted the saffron advance for decades finally makes way for the BJP in a bitterly contested election against the incumbent chief minister Mamata Banerjee and her Trinamool Congress (TMC), but this is a result not without its concerns, complexities and worries.

This is the first time that the BJP will take power in West Bengal, which has not had a national party leading the state since Siddhartha Shankar Ray of the Congress left office as chief minister on 30 April 1977. This clearly represents a tectonic shift in the landscape of Bengal politics and will have its impact across the nation. The state that was led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist) for over 23 years and by the TMC for 15 years now goes to the BJP.

But the West Bengal result raises important questions about the fairness and robustness of the election process itself, and to the extent that it may erode faith in the process, it brings every other election and the result it produces into doubt. This strikes at the roots of the democratic form of government in ways that are all too obvious, but these worries will be easily brushed aside by the BJP in the first flush of victory.

With its workers busy distributing ladoos at street corners in Kolkata, the BJP will be unwilling and unable to see the price that its victory in West Bengal will exact on the nation, particularly if serious questions on the process are not answered and if numbers show that the decisive factor in this election was the alleged targeted deletion of voters under the special intensive revision (SIR) of voter rolls.

At the time of writing this, the BJP leads and wins together were above 200 in the West Bengal Assembly of 294, while the TMC was in the mid-80s. The BJP vote share stood at 45.4 per cent towards the evening, up from TMC's 40.85 per cent, according to live data put up by the Election Commission. The numbers will change as more results come in.

In the most recent election, the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, the BJP vote share was 38.73 per cent, behind TMC’s 45.76 per cent. Thus, in two years, between two key elections, the BJP in West Bengal has delivered dramatic growth — its vote share trailed by 7.03 percentage points and now it leads by 4.55 percentage points over the TMC. In theory, this is possible for a variety of reasons, but West Bengal still may present some challenges with respect to the numbers.

It is, of course, too early to do a full-fledged analysis based entirely on numbers and voting shares since not all results are in. Yet, if indications are that the SIR appears to stand as a plausible cause for the dramatic emergence of the BJP in West Bengal, then there will be a lot of discomfort with the results. If subsequently this is found to hold, the BJP victory will bring massive costs later in terms of paying the price for playing with the system. It will also leave a lot for the Election Commission to answer.

In Tamil Nadu, the result has delivered a surprising reversal for the DMK. Actor-turned-politician Vijay’s Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) is in the lead with over 100 seats, with the DMK coming in as the second largest party at 62. With counting still on at the time of writing, it is not clear if Vijay’s party will go past the halfway mark of 118 required to form a government.

Yet, the emerging picture is of TVK on its own or with support from other groups or alliances taking power in the state. This, too, represents a monumental shift in the politics of Tamil Nadu and of India. This is the first time in 50 years that Tamil Nadu would have broken away from the politics of the DMK versus AIADMK that the state political arena has seen play out in every election.

It is too early to say what this means or how Vijay will play out as chief minister, particularly in his relationship with the BJP. Vijay has opposed the BJP’s pet scheme of ‘one nation, one election’ and has in the past described the BJP as an ideological foe and the DMK as a political rival. Yet, the BJP may wish to have him on its side, if only to stem criticism and improve its equations in a state that has been a strong opponent of its politics.

In Kerala, the Congress has come to power after a decade with 63 seats in a House of 140. The BJP has won three Assembly seats for the first time — an achievement of sorts, given that the party has historically struggled in the state, securing just one MLA in 2016 and one MP in 2024. This gradual expansion of the BJP’s footprint suggests that sustained political effort can yield results even in resistant terrain, and calls for an equally determined and vigilant Opposition.

At the end of the day, this is a political battle that shows the BJP to be an unstoppable steamroller, now controlling power across the north, the west and the east. The Opposition parties, which have been unable to come together with a coherent strategy for the long haul, will have to once again rethink their approach.

It is clear that the BJP of today will stop at nothing in doing the deals it needs to take power — from breaking political parties, using investigative agencies, to increasing the communalisation of politics — driven by the belief that the ends justify the means. If this is to be challenged, the Opposition will have to set aside differences, unite, and rebuild around principles and values that many argue have eroded in Indian politics.

Views are personal. Jagdish Rattanani is a journalist and faculty member at SPJIMR. More of his writing may be found here

Article courtesy: The Billion Press

Although only 1 crore votes out of 6 crore had been counted till 1.00 pm on Monday, 4 May, the writing on the wall appeared clear enough. The BJP was leading across West Bengal. Its unexpected victory even in Muslim-dominated constituencies in Murshidabad and Malda reflected how badly minority votes had been split. Pollsters claimed over 60 per cent Hindu voters in the state had consolidated behind the BJP to end the 15-year-rule of Mamata Banerjee and Trinamool Congress.

When Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union home minister Amit Shah left the state on the last day of campaigning on 27 April, both said they would return at the swearing-in of the BJP government. West Bengal governor R.N. Ravi, brought in before the election, twice declared that change was coming to the state. The day before the counting of votes, Mumbai Police gave permission to a victory march celebrating the BJP’s win in West Bengal. They did not need exit polls to tell them the result. They knew.

In hindsight, TMC's defeat will undoubtedly be attributed to people’s restlessness for change and their belief that the BJP, which had held up Central grants, would loosen the purse strings once they came to power in the state.

Big business could barely hide its happiness. Industrialist Harsh Goenka tweeted on Monday afternoon, “Bengal’s business community is absolutely delighted with result of Bengal elections: 1. Development will be back on the agenda 2. Jobs and investments will follow 3. A stronger, more cohesive social climate will emerge. A decisive mandate for BJP is the catalyst Bengal’s economy has been waiting for”.

Both Muslims and women, it was believed, would stand by the TMC. The women’s support for and loyalty to Mamata Banerjee, it was said, was not transactional and BJP’s promise of doubling the cash transfer from Rs 1,500 to Rs 3,000, it was felt, would have no impact.

This turned out to be delusionary, as the counting trend suggested. The pillars had not entirely collapsed but had cracked just enough for the BJP to cash in. Both demography and linguistic pride, wrote columnist Swaminathan Aiyar, would ensure a victory for Mamata. West Bengal, he felt, was not yet ready to accept the hegemony of Hindi-Hindu-Hindustan. Like many other commentators, he has turned out to be wrong.

Even the anger generated by a largely senseless and illogical Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls does not seem to have made any difference. The large number of migrant workers, who were subjected to considerable harassment, having to travel back and forth from their places of work in BJP-ruled states, it was argued, would vote against the BJP, which supported the exercise, with a vengeance. They apparently did not. Could they have been driven to vote for the BJP to buy peace at their place of work?

Anti-incumbency, recruitment scams, women’s safety, lack of industrialisation and steady jobs, corruption and lumpenisation of TMC cadres will be cited no doubt as some of the other factors which influenced the voters in the state. However, the key reason for the defeat of the ruling party seems to be the crippling of Mamata Banerjee by the Union government and the Election Commission ever since the election was notified on 15 March.

The unprecedented transfer of several hundred officers in the state by the Election Commission — from district magistrate and SPs to police constables — would have dealt a blow to the ruling party. The chief minister was reduced to a lame duck as Central Armed Police Forces took over police stations and collectorates. Central agencies like ED and Income Tax raided the offices and the directors of I-PAC, the political consultancy firm which acted as an extension of the ruling party in the districts. While BJP retained control over the ‘machinery’, TMC lost control of it.

The CAPF accompanied BJP candidates during campaigning and warned TMC leaders to ensure that their party cadres did not disturb BJP’s campaigning. TMC overnight stopped being ‘feared’ even as BJP president Nitin Nabin was seen riding in an armoured vehicle of the CAPF.

Reports suggested that all CAPF heads were ordered to remain in the state till after the counting; and the Union home minister — not the Election Commission — declared that 750 companies would stay back in the state even after a new government is installed. Such decisions were once left to the ECI but the difference between the Union government and the election commission has got blurred.

It was effective 2018, four years into Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s first term in office, that Sweden’s V-Dem Institute marked India’s descent into a state it describes as an ‘electoral autocracy’. That dubious classification has stuck ever since, though the democratic backsliding is, in fact, far worse than the label might suggest. In the 2026 edition of V-Dem’s Democracy Report, India is ranked #105 (out of 179 countries) on its ‘Liberal Democracy Index’.

For citizens who have watched this erosion with concern, then alarm and now a sense of resignation, the 2024 Lok Sabha elections had briefly offered a ray of hope. That was two years ago in June 2024, when a more well-knit Opposition than you see today was able to make common cause, push back credibly and stop the BJP from securing a simple majority in the Lok Sabha.

Again, just two months ago in April 2026, the same Opposition was able to foil the BJP+ government’s plans to push through a Delimitation Bill that threatened to dramatically undercut the representation of southern states in Parliament and undermine India’s federal compact.

In its all-too-transparent bid to concentrate power at the Centre, the BJP has also been pushing ‘One Nation, One Election’ and many other unitary variants of the same driving impulse.

The primary unitary formulation advanced by the BJP–Sangh is their foundational ideological slogan ‘Ek Desh, Ek Nishan, Ek Vidhan, Ek Pradhan’ (one country, one flag, one Constitution, one prime minister). This historical formulation traces back to the BJP’s predecessor, the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, and its founder Syama Prasad Mookerjee.

It has grown new tentacles in the Modi era, in the shape of One Nation, One Election (ONOE); One Nation, One Tax; One Nation, One Ration Card; One Nation, One Grid; One Nation, One Uniform and so on.

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Even though the BJP returned to power in 2024, it drew some lessons from a victory that still smelled like defeat. It hadn’t managed to entirely steamroll the Opposition and had fallen way short of the crushing 400-plus majority it was sloganeering about before the elections.

In Uttar Pradesh, where it had just inaugurated the new Ram Mandir to declare a great civilisational triumph, as it were, it dropped to 33 seats (out of 80) while the Samajwadi Party bagged 37. It even lost the prestige seat of Faizabad, which includes the assembly segment of Ayodhya. That defeat stung.

After all its toolkit attempts to bribe, bully, break the Opposition, it still only managed to secure 36.6 per cent of the popular vote. Which tells you something about its real appeal with the population at large, though not enough about its disproportionate hold on the levers of power.

The big lesson the BJP drew from its 2024 performance was that it needed to do more to tighten its grip on power. It realised that after everything it had done so far, it was still not able to organically win enough support to secure the two-thirds majority needed to rewrite the Constitution. With the singlemindedness of a rampaging bull, it saw that the only way was to re-engineer the electorate itself, to do a comprehensive purge of the voter rolls, and ensure that this culling of voters was decisively net-positive for the BJP. Enter the SIR.

At its service in the project to reshape the electoral rolls, the BJP has the Election Commission of India (ECI), which presides over the SIR. Readers will know that the ECI is supposedly an autonomous, nonpartisan body, but the election commissioners are now (legally) chosen by a 2:1 ruling party majority, which turns the ECI into a government department, for all intents and purposes.

The new law came into being via The CEC and Other Election Commissioners Bill, 2023, which was passed in December 2023, ahead of the Lok Sabha elections in April–May 2024.

Under the new law, the chief election commissioner (CEC) and other election commissioners are appointed by the President upon the recommendation of a selection committee. The selection committee consists of the prime minister, a Union cabinet minister and the leader of the Opposition/ leader of the largest Opposition party in the Lok Sabha. The ECI has read the script and is duly reporting to its new master.

The state Assembly elections in Bihar (in November 2025, after SIR, Phase 1) and in West Bengal (in April 2026 after SIR, Phase 2) are both excellent test cases to demonstrate the intention and the effect of the SIR. At the end of Bengal’s SIR nightmare, the state’s count of eligible voters was ~90 lakh less than the pre-SIR baseline of 7.66 crore. In Bihar, 69 lakh voters were dropped.

Citizens who view these developments with alarm had hoped that the Supreme Court of India might step in to question all this and hold the ECI to account. But on 27 May, the Supreme Court gave a clean chit to the SIR exercise. The bench of CJI Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi ruled that the SIR process was constitutional and well within the ECI’s statutory powers. It held that the SIR process is necessary to protect the integrity, accuracy and credibility of electoral rolls.

Phase 3 of said SIR is currently under way in the remaining 16 states and three Union Territories. The first two phases, covering 10 states and 3 UTs, saw 7.2 crore deletions (and 2 crore additions, as per the ECI). This is down 10.2 per cent from pre-SIR baselines; in other words, the exercise has disenfranchised one in every 10 Indian voters.

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Although mainstream media practically blacked out all the evidence of targeted deletions and more suspect tampering with the voter rolls, there were enough reports (on this portal and media outfits like The Wire, Newslaundry, Scroll, The News Minute, Reporters’ Collective and others) and other exposés besides — like the ones by Rahul Gandhi on Mahadevpura and Aland in Karnataka — that demanded a thorough investigation.

There was enough evidence to create reasonable doubt that the SIR was compromised — and yet, instead of demanding some answers from the ECI, demanding that it come clean on the SIR, and refute the evidence that had been presented, the Supreme Court has chosen to stamp its approval on the process.

This should tell the Opposition that the elections are no longer a fair battleground to take on the BJP. It needs to find other means to fight the capture of Indian democracy, the capture of India’s democratic institutions, the capture of media and other means of communicating with the people.

Opposition leaders should remember that to fight this assault on free and fair elections, on our democracy, on our Constitution, on India’s pluralist character, they need to make common cause. They need to define a Common Threat Perception, much before they can formulate a Common Minimum Programme of governance.

To even have another shot at governance, they must first learn to swim together, to recognise true allies and Trojan horses, and to keep true allies onside. The INDIA bloc meeting on 8 June was a beginning. There’s still a mountain to climb.

A lady filed a complaint of inappropriate behaviour against a Congress worker in 2022 in Telangana. Three years later, the Congress made Meenakshi Natarajan — former Lok Sabha MP and a resident of Madhya Pradesh — in-charge of Telangana. The lady went to court and filed a complaint against several people including Natarajan, named at number 4 for ostensibly taking no action against the man she had accused. A Telangana court sent notices to the people named, including Natarajan, in September 2025. The court is yet to take cognisance of the case and the charges are yet to be framed.

Now, hear Natarajan herself. The returning officer for the upcoming Rajya Sabha election, she claimed, had held that she had concealed information about the ‘notice’ in Form 26, which she had filled as part of her Rajya Sabha nomination papers. Details required in the form ranged from the political party she sought to represent, her serial number in the electoral roll, information about Income Tax, PAN, properties and personal information like her phone number and email ID.

The form also sought details about a) details of pending criminal cases against her and b) details of cases in which she may have been convicted by a court of law.

Form 26, she claimed, did not seek any detail about legal notices or summons sent to her. There was no column either for providing details of notices or cases which courts had not taken cognisance of. So, she asked, how was she at fault?

Let us now turn to the Supreme Court hearing on Friday, 12 June. A Bench of Justices P.K. Mishra and A.S. Chandurkar held that election-related petitions are not maintainable by courts after commencement of the election process. The Bench said it was not inclined to entertain Natarajan’s plea in view of the law laid down in the 1952 judgement in N.P. Ponnuswamy vs Returning Officer, that the appropriate remedy in election matters is an election petition filed before the appropriate high court.

Senior advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi argued in vain that the court had to jurisdiction to step in if the returning officer made a gross error. Natarajan, he pointed out, was seeking relief to participate in the biennial election to the Rajya Sabha. Her appeal was to establish her right to contest. She did not file the petition asking the Supreme Court to declare her the winner. If the electors chose to vote against her, she would lose, Singhvi argued. The court could direct the Election Commission to accept her nomination and allow her to contest in the election scheduled for Wednesday, 18 June.

But the returning officer declared the three BJP candidates elected unopposed from Madhya Pradesh. In the election to the Rajya Sabha, elected members of state Assemblies cast their preferential vote and winners are decided by virtue of a formula. Very often candidates, falling short of the required number of votes, buy votes, a phenomenon widely known; which is why political parties often herd their MLAs into resorts so that rival parties are not able to contact them. 

The Election Commission and the courts are aware of this reality and yet, this does not seem to bother them. The Commission has never been directed by the judiciary to tighten rules so that the integrity of an election is not compromised.

Time and again, however, the Supreme Court has refused to interfere in the electoral process on the ground that once the process is set in motion, the Election Commission alone was the appropriate authority to remedy the situation. Once the election is over, the only recourse for aggrieved parties and candidates is to file election petitions, which on paper must be decided within six months but are seldom settled before four or five years. 

In an editorial on 12 June, The Hindu pointed out that Section 33A of the Representation of the People Act required disclosure only of those cases that carry a punishment of two years or more and, above all, only of those cases in which charges have been framed.

'Framing of charges is a judicial step, which follows the filing of a charge sheet. The RO’s position that material facts had been concealed and the nomination papers were incomplete is not merely a misinterpretation of the law, but an insult to common sense. Going by that logic, a candidate could be disqualified for failing to list notices of traffic violations too,' the editorial noted.

So, was the Supreme Court right in dismissing her petition? Natarajan, a steadfast and stoic Gandhian, reacted by saying, “This is not a personal setback. This is a setback to democracy and the Constitution of India... I said this in the beginning that members of the Election Commission were compromised. When our people went to the Election Commission, they did not answer us for 48 hours. The Supreme Court at least heard our plea and gave a verdict..."