Surjit Bhalla: SIR needs reform. But let’s go by numbers, not protestors’ slogans

A crore of eligible voters wrongly removed is not nothing. But inflating 1 crore into 7 does not help the 1 crore; it lets the ECI dismiss the real crore along with the imaginary six

A passport is the state’s own certificate of citizenship; if the state now doubts it, the state must prove its case before a tribunal, not ask the citizen to prove it again. That is a reform worth marching for. Regime change is not. (File)

6 min readOct 24, 2026 07:10 AM IST First published on: Oct 24, 2026 at 06:56 AM IST

Can somebody please explain what is going on in political India? The agitation Rahul Gandhi has joined is, in Prashant Bhushan’s words, a “fight for regime change”. Regime change is what Donald Trump wished on Iran’s clerics: The end of a political system, not a Congress victory in 2029. The foreign press, once the voice of relative sanity, has joined the chorus. The Economist (October 1) says the Election Commission “is barring tens of millions from voting”. The Financial Times (October 15) headlines an overhaul “that removed 130mn voters”, though its own chart says these are names “flagged for possible exclusion”. The protesters’ slogan is 13 crore votes deleted. And in these pages, Jean Drèze and Yogendra Yadav (DY) (‘Let us not be in denial, disenfranchisement is real’, October 20) find “well over 10 crore missing voters”, about 14 crore for all India.

These are all-India numbers, including states whose final rolls are not yet out. So consider the nine states where the final rolls are known: Bihar and the eight large states of the second phase, home to three in five Indian adults.