India rejects US lawmaker Pramila Jayapal’s remarks on voter roll revision as ‘interference in fellow democracy’

India on Friday rejected senior US Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal’s criticism of the revision of the country’s electoral rolls as unwarranted and tantamount to interfering in the “electoral practices of a fellow democracy”.

Jayapal, an Indian-origin lawmaker from the Democratic Party who has been a vocal critic of the Indian government, said on social media on Thursday that she was concerned about actions that appeared aimed at purging 130 million people from voting rolls.

When external affairs ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal was asked about the matter at a regular media briefing, he replied: “We find the remarks of the Congresswoman unwarranted and uninformed and tantamount to interfering in the electoral practices of a fellow democracy.”

He added, “This is an approach that undermines democracy itself.”

Jayapal, who was born in Chennai and moved to the US in 1982, said on social media that she was “deeply concerned about the actions of the Indian government to purge 130 million people from the voting rolls”. The move “appears to be a similar playbook to what the Trump Administration is doing [in the US] to undermine voting rights in a democracy”, she said.

“Protecting democracies everywhere is essential work, and the Indian people — like the American people — deserve free and fair elections. Non-violent resistance movements are essential in these moments and I stand with the Indian people who are engaging in non-violent protests to counter anti-democratic efforts in India,” she said.

Jayapal’s comments came against the backdrop of protests in India by young people and opposition parties over alleged irregularities in the special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, which has led to the striking off of millions of voters’ names.

In December 2019, external affairs minister S Jaishankar had called off a meeting with US lawmakers after they reportedly declined to exclude Jayapal from the gathering. At the time, Jayapal had criticised restrictions imposed by the government in Jammu and Kashmir after the region’s special status was scrapped.

“I have an interest in meeting people who are objective and open to discussion but not the people who already made up their minds,” Jaishankar had said at the time, after Jayapal introduced a resolution in the US House of Representatives that urged India to lift all restrictions on communications in Jammu and Kashmir.