THE huge mass of humanity at the Ramlila Maidan on November 1, has sounded the bugle. The grounds which are more familiar to hosting the ceremonial Ravana Dahan as part of the Dussehra festival sounded a new tune for the dahan of the contemporary evil. This occasion was to express the resolve to extinguish the forces that are running berserk, wanting to snatch away one of the most crucial constitutional rights of the Indian people – the right to vote.

People’s Democracy has already recorded the evolution of the struggle against this evil attempt through the pursuit of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls since last year, beginning with the Bihar exercise. Since then, much water has flown down our rivers to unite the tides of opposition and protest. On November 1, Ramlila Maidan brought together the people of a nation in rebellion. It was only natural that the INDIA Bloc which has now emerged as a broad-based platform of all those political forces who are committed to fight the corporate-communal nexus spearheaded by the RSS-BJP combine, for the last 12 years, was the uniting force for this confluence.

The conduct of SIR has proven that this struggle has assumed a country wide dimension. The attempt to pursue mass disenfranchisement of voters has now come to be established beyond any shred of doubt. The states where the SIR process has been completed, together with those which are in its closing stages, have seen the deletion of around 13.5 crore voters, a very significant proportion of our population.

This exercise has been so divisive, with the choice of Gyanesh Kumar, the Chief Election Commissioner, being no coincidence. His past record, in playing a crucial role for the scrapping of Article 370 and the construction of Ram Temple in Ayodhya – the two foremost agenda items of the RSS-BJP combine – suited this task. After almost a year and a half of the commencement of SIR, this completely fraudulent exercise aims to create new electoral rolls across the country. Gyanesh Kumar has no agreement with the two other Election Commissioners. That is the level of isolation that this concept and paradigm, which clearly has the stamp of the Modi-Shah duo, has managed to achieve. It is also clear that the actual objective of the exercise was to redefine Indian citizenship along religious identity driven course, with the stated objective of driving out infiltrators. In fact, Amit Shah had publicly spelt out the contours of the exercise through the slogan of ‘detect, delete and deport’. But in the process, the exercise has also done away with legitimate voters from the disempowered sections like dalits, tribals, migrant workers and women communities disproportionately.

Such heat has been generated at the grassroots against the SIR exercise that Yogi Adityanath himself is now coming out openly saying 1.7 crore Hindus have been eliminated from the voter rolls. The gathering storm which exploded in Ramlila Maidan has been so well-directed that the government and its top brass have acted in a no-holds barred mode to protect Gyanesh Kumar who has disappeared from the public view since September 23, when the Indian Express investigation exposed the cracks in the ECI itself, over legal and procedural violations in the conduct of the SIR exercise. Even today, independent media and now increasingly even sections of the mainstream media are bringing out new factual and documentary evidence of the humungous level of wrongdoing.

People have braved severe repression in course of the development of this huge democratic struggle to defend their right to vote. The government has gone to the extent of denotifying Jantar Mantar as a designated site of protest, but that this attempt has come to a naught was demonstrated by the lakhs of people who assembled in Ramlila Maidan. A day earlier, the public impeachment of the CEC had formally adopted a resolution pinpointing the minimum immediate demands of removing Gyanesh Kumar, freezing and rolling back the SIR exercise and amending the law which allowed only the Executive monopoly over the appointment of the CEC and other Election Commissioners. The presence of all opposition political parties and their representatives in the Parliament, civil society organisations and deleted voters, combining to pass the resolution, underlined the gravity of the situation.

While Ramlila Maidan was witness to the growing rebellious mood of the people, we cannot overlook the fact that these Opposition demands also bring out dimensions about which, the BJP has no credible narrative or any factual evidence to counter it with. As the Sanskrit phrase reads, ‘Vināśa kāle viparīta buddhi’, Shah and his gang are coming out to spill the muck that they have disgraced themselves with. In a programme in Hyderabad, Amit Shah did not hold back and declared that BJP will deport every infiltrator and stated that opposition to SIR was aimed to preserve illegal infiltrators. Rejecting the fact of over 13 crore deletions, underlined by documents of ECI and their affidavit in the Supreme Court, Shah claimed that of all those who were deleted, three crore were infiltrators. Following his footsteps, his junior colleague, Nitin Nabin, the BJP President has stated in Kolkata that six crore infiltrators were deleted from the rolls. Not to be left behind, the West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendhu Adhikari stated that the purpose of SIR was to drive out infiltrators and to send them to Bangladesh. Little did these leaders try to look at the data thrown up by the SIR itself. Fact is, only around 1600 voters deleted in six states were confirmed as foreigners among 9.86 crores overall deleted in those states. Naturally, such a fictional narrative has gone to the absurd length of claiming that the opposition is nothing short of anarchic and anti-democratic. Not stopping at that, they have coined a new slogan of launching a struggle for democracy and against anarchy. Little do they realise that the fictitious charge of such large-scale infiltration would put Amit Shah, the Home Minister, in the dock as his ministry is the nodal agency for stopping infiltration. In fact, people are asking that with double engine governments in most of the states, how is it that democracy stands imperilled?

Ramlila Maidan has demonstrated overwhelming unity and resolve. It is also quite clear that people who came from far and wide, braving all kinds of repression and obstacles in their travel, are not prepared to relent. They are driven by a sense of insecurity of losing their right to vote which gives them access to the minimal measures towards their welfare as citizens.

India being so huge and so diverse, the resolve in Ramlila has to consolidate around the defence of the democratic, secular Constitution which has legitimised that right and their links with the governance in the country. Therefore, the way forward is not to rest but take the struggle forward. Going deeper and wider in reaching out. RSS-BJP combine stands exposed. But they are no ordinary political forces. They have to be removed in this do or die battle for defending our democracy. We cannot rest.

(November 04, 2026)