Ahmedabad: Several Muslim voters in the Jamalpur Assembly of Gujarat’s Ahmedabad were reportedly removed and declared dead in the electoral rolls during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in the state, sparking allegations of targeted voter exclusion and misuse of electoral procedures.
The deletion requests were mainly from voters who claimed their names were marked for removal even though they were alive, included in the initial draft electoral roll and had submitted the SIR forms.
The residents said that the objections were filed using Form 7, which allows a person to ask the Election Commission (EC) to remove a voter’s name from the list if they are believed to have died, shifted residence or been enrolled in duplication. They further alleged that Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) workers submitted these objection requests to falsely declare Muslim voters as “dead.”
A municipal councillor from the Jamalpur constituency, Rafiq Sheifk Qureshi, staying in ward no 21, faced this issue when an objection was filed against him due to a change of address. The objector was reportedly Pankaj, residing in ward no 16, further raising questions about unrelated parties being allowed to file objections.
“We are alive, we voted before, and yet the system is telling us we don’t exist,” Qureishi told Maktoob Media.
He added that if this continued, it is “not just voter deletion, it is erasure.”
Speaking on the targeted voter deletion, the Convener of the Minority Coordination Committee (MCC), Mujahid Nafees, said the pattern of objections was an organised attempt at suppressing Muslim voters.
“This is not an administrative error. This is a systematic attempt to delete Muslim voters from the electoral roll by falsely declaring them dead or displaced,” Nafees said.
Moreover, Booth Level Officers (BLO) have shared that nearly 300 Form 7 objections were received in the Jamalpur constituency, with activists saying the number could be higher than 20,000.
The MCC submitted a formal representation to Gujarat’s Chief Electoral Officer, urging swift intervention.
In the letter, the organisation demanded that the Form 7 objection should not be accepted based on third-party claims alone and include special verification camps to inspect all Form 7 objections, legal action be taken against those found to have filed false objections seeking the deletion of Muslim voters and that an inquiry be launched to determine whether multiple objectors have links to any political party.
“These voters filled their SIR forms. Their names appeared in the first draft. Yet, objections were filed by unrelated individuals, often from different polling parts. This raises serious questions about intent,” the convener said.
“If such objections are allowed unchecked, it will directly impact opposition voters and undermine the integrity of elections,” Nafees added.
Political leaders and workers in Ahmedabad have asked for the registration of first information reports (FIR) against the individuals who filed the objections.
In Gujarat, the SIR process is in the claims and objections phase, and there has been no official response from the election authorities to the allegation.
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