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On the day when voting for the state assembly of West Bengal commenced, with names of slightly more than two and half million people deleted from the voter list due to Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls by Election Commission of India, under the close supervision of Supreme Court, The Guardian published an article, titled “Millions in India stripped of vote before critical state election, as government seeks to ‘purify’ electoral roll”. Authored by Hannah Ellis Petersen and Akash Hassan, it referred, among other things, to the assessment of experts, saying names of Muslims and other minorities have been disproportionately deleted from the electoral roll. The article quoted Indian economist Parakala Prabhakar, who described the SIR as a process “… about killing the citizenship of minorities. It is a bloodless political genocide.”

Such adverse comments about the Election Commission of India, and electoral conduct in 2026, under Modi regime, stand in sharp contrast to the highly admirable observations in international media, 74 years ago, when the first general elections were successfully conducted across India. At that time, India’s prime minister was Jawaharlal Nehru and rest of the world was sceptical of our country’s ability to conduct elections by employing the universal adult franchise in face of massive illiteracy rate prevailing then and people were riddled with poverty and backwardness owing to centuries of colonial rule. And yet the impossible task of conducting elections based on adult franchise was made possible, and rest of the world marvelled at India for living up to its tryst with democracy.

Also read: The Institutional Collapse of Indian Democracy

While in 2026, the........

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