Opposition lawmakers say it will impact minorities hardest, including Muslims and Dalit communities
\n NEW DELHI
\nIndian election officials have given voters in Bihar state just weeks to prove their citizenship, requiring documents few possess in a registration revamp set to be applied nationwide, triggering disenfranchisement fears.
\nThe Election Commission of India (ECI) announced the revision of the voter rolls in June ahead of upcoming polls in the eastern state.
\nIt said the exercise will later be replicated across the nation of 1.4 billion people.
\nAccording to the ECI, the \u201cintensive revision\u201d was needed in part to avoid the \u201cinclusion of the names of foreign illegal immigrants\u201d.
\nMembers of Prime Minister Narendra Modi\u2019s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have long claimed that large numbers of undocumented Muslim migrants from neighbouring Bangladesh have fraudulently entered India\u2019s electoral rolls.
\nCritics say the overhaul could render vast numbers of Indian citizens unable to vote.
\n\u201cYou are being asked to produce documents that very few people have,\u201d said Asaduddin Owaisi, a prominent Muslim lawmaker.
\n\u201cIt will lead to mass disenfranchisement.\u201d
\nOpposition lawmakers say it will impact minorities the hardest, including Muslims and Dalit communities, those on the bottom rung of India\u2019s rigid caste hierarchy.
\n\u2018Engineered exclusions\u2019
\nAll potential voters in Bihar will have to provide proof of citizenship by July 25.
\nThose registered in 2003, the last time scrutiny of the voter list took place in Bihar, can submit a copy of that.
\nThe rest \u2014 around 30 million people, according to the ECI\u2019s estimates \u2014 have to provide evidence of their place and date of birth.
\nAnd those born after 1987 must also furnish proof of their parents\u2019 Indian citizenship.
\nThe requirement affects more than a third of potential voters in Bihar, India\u2019s third most populous state and its poorest.
\nIt is also a crucial election battleground as the only state in India\u2019s northern Hindi-speaking belt where Modi\u2019s BJP has only ever governed in a coalition.
\nBihar\u2019s main opposition party, the Rashtriya Janata Dal, has challenged the election commission in the Supreme Court, along with other parties and activists.
\n\u201cIt is being used to justify aggressive and opaque revisions of electoral rolls that disproportionately target Muslim, Dalit and poor (Indian) migrant communities,\u201d the court petition read.
\n\u201cThey are not random patterns but… engineered exclusions.\u201d
\nUnlike many other countries, India does not have a unique national identity card.
\nThe widely used biometric-linked \u201cAadhaar\u201d identity card is not among the documents listed by the ECI as acceptable proof.
\nDocuments that can be used include birth certificates, passports and matriculation records.
\nOf these, most people are likely to rely on their matriculation certificates.
\nBut even those are in short supply in Bihar, where literacy rates are among the lowest in India.
\nAccording to an analysis published in The Indian Express newspaper, only 35% of people in the state hold such a document.
\n\u201cIn Bihar, where literacy is not very high, many people are not likely to have the kind of documents the ECI has demanded,\u201d said Jagdeep Chhokar from the New Delhi-based Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR).
\n\u201cThe poor, poorly educated, uneducated and minorities will be the most impacted.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Opposition lawmakers say it will impact minorities hardest, including Muslims and Dalit communities NEW DELHI Indian election officials have given voters in Bihar state just weeks to prove their citizenship, requiring documents few possess in a registration revamp set to be applied nationwide, triggering disenfranchisement fears. The Election Commission of India (ECI) announced the revision […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":489552,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-489532","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n