SIR aimed at removing Muslims from voter rolls, alleges Prashant Bhushan
Bengaluru: Senior Supreme Court advocate Prashant Bhushan has alleged that the BJP government is using the Election Commission to conduct a Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise to remove minorities, particularly Muslims, from the electoral rolls.
Speaking at a public seminar on “Delimitation, Women’s Reservation Bill and SIR” held at Ashirvad Centre in Bengaluru on Sunday, Bhushan said the SIR process posed a serious challenge to democratic rights and was being used to deprive eligible citizens of their voting rights.
He said the Election Commission has made it mandatory for officials to go door to door and fill out enumeration forms as part of the voter verification process. While the Commission maintains that the exercise is meant to verify and update the electoral rolls, Bhushan claimed that such a process was not followed when the country’s first voter list was prepared.
Bhushan alleged that 60 lakh voters were removed from the electoral rolls in West Bengal through the SIR process. He claimed that over 27,000 names were deleted merely due to spelling variations and alleged that around 70 per cent of those removed were Muslims. According to him, many of them were supporters of the All India Trinamool Congress. He argued that this was one of the reasons why the BJP won several Assembly constituencies by narrow margins.
He further said that when the issue of SIR was raised before the Supreme Court, the matter did not receive adequate consideration. Of the 60 lakh voters allegedly removed in West Bengal, only around 1,500 were restored to the rolls, he claimed. Bhushan also expressed concern over the appointment process of Election Commissioners and said challenges to it in the Supreme Court had not yielded meaningful results.
Social activist K. S. Vimala said the implementation of SIR had adversely affected the rights of Muslims and women. She questioned the BJP government’s proposal for women’s reservation while linking its implementation to delimitation and the Census.
Bhushan also warned that delimitation based purely on population figures could disadvantage southern states, as population growth in North India has been significantly higher than in the South. He alleged that the delimitation process could work in favour of the ruling BJP at the Centre.
He said such a process may be difficult to challenge legally if it is carried out strictly on population criteria, and suggested that states likely to be affected should launch public movements to oppose it.
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NEET student hangs self in Rajasthan's Sikar
Jaipur (PTI): A student preparing for the NEET examination allegedly committed suicide by hanging himself in a rented room in Rajasthan's Sikar on Friday, police said.
According to the police, the student allegedly hanged himself from a ceiling fan using his sister's scarf while one sister was attending coaching classes and the other was in the bathroom.
He had appeared in the NEET UG exam 2026, which was cancelled due to paper leak, they said.
Udyog Nagar SHO Rajesh Kumar said that the deceased, identified as Pradeep Meghwal, was a resident of Kanika ki Dhani village in Jhunjhunu's Gudha Gaudji area.
He had been living in a rented room in Sikar's Jaldhari Nagar area with his two sisters while preparing for NEET over the last three years.
His elder sister later found him hanging and informed the landlord and police after bringing him down, officials said.
The SHO said the body was kept at SK Hospital mortuary, and a postmortem had not been conducted.
The student's father, Rajesh Kumar Meghwal, told police that Pradeep's NEET examination had gone well and the family was expecting him to score around 650 marks.
Former Rajasthan deputy chief minister Sachin Pilot expressed grief over the incident and linked it to anxiety among students after reports of irregularities and paper leaks in NEET 2026.
Pilot said repeated paper leak incidents and cancellation of examinations were affecting students' mental health and demanded a time-bound investigation and strict action against those responsible.
