At a Congressional briefing in Washington, DC, a coalition of civil and human rights bodies in the US draw attention to allegations of organised ‘voter suppression’ in India
WASHINGTON, DC — The Assam government’s campaign to deport Bengali-speaking Muslims is “absolutely illegal” and “inhumane,” senior Supreme Court advocate Sanjay Hegde has said.
Strongly condemning the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government’s drive, the legal luminary warned that such actions dangerously redefine Indian citizenship along religious and linguistic lines.
Speaking at a Congressional briefing here on Thursday, Hegde said: “You cannot decide citizenship arbitrarily only on the basis of a person’s religion or on the basis of the language that you speak… this infection has carried on [from Assam] to various states in India.”
The Congressional briefing, convened by a coalition of civil and human rights organisations, also drew attention to allegations of organised voter suppression and citizenship revocation targeting marginalised populations in India
The event, held virtually, was sponsored by groups which claim to be committed to pluralism, religious freedom, and democratic integrity. They include the Indian American Muslim Council, Hindus for Human Rights, World Against Genocide, New York State Council of Churches, Genocide Watch, The Religious Nationalism Project, The Humanism Project (Australia), Diaspora in Action for Human Rights and Democracy, Center for Pluralism, and the Association of Indian Muslims of America, Washington DC.
At the briefing, Indian opposition leaders and legal experts outlined a pattern they describe as the systematic manipulation of electoral rolls and marginalisation of vulnerable communities.
In recent months, thousands of Bengali Muslim families in Assam have been targeted through mass eviction drives. Media reports claim that in July alone, around 3,400 homes were bulldozed across five eviction operations. These demolition campaigns were accompanied by at least 18 hate speech rallies — many attended by elected BJP leaders — in which Muslims were branded “infiltrators,” according to the Centre for the Study of Organized Hate.
Advocate Hegde stressed that such propaganda has created a hostile public perception: “Due to this climate of anti-Muslim and anti-Bangladeshi hatred, the average mind believes that anybody who speaks Bengali and who is a Muslim, is more likely to be Bangladeshi and less likely to be Indian.”
“All over [the country], we are in a situation where people are identified in the common mind as not being Indian; then there are people who have been, through a legal process, declared not to be Indian, but you have no other country which is willing to receive them as its own citizen,” he explained. “What the current government in Assam is doing, especially as elections come close, is to take some people who have either been declared by a judicial process not to be Indian, or any other people whom they suspect, and then try to physically push them back across the border with Bangladesh.”
Meanwhile, spokesman of Congress, the main opposition party in India, Pawan Khera, charged that the Election Commission, in collusion with the ruling BJP, is engaged in “organised deletion” of voter lists across regions like Bihar and Bengaluru, specifically targeting Muslims, backward castes, Dalits, and other groups that threaten BJP’s vote share. This alleged manipulation, according to Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, contributed to the loss of at least 48 parliamentary seats in the 2024 general elections through mass irregularities and manipulated entries.
Opposition parties contend that the poll panel’s recent directive, mandating 80 million voters in Bihar to re-register or risk being labelled “suspected foreign nationals,” is part of a broader strategy to disenfranchise millions and strip them of fundamental rights. Khera emphasised the cascading effects: exclusion from government benefits, pensions, housing, and also jeopardising legal identity and citizenship. Protests against these election policies in Delhi were met with arrests, which opposition leaders decried as suppression of democratic dissent and closure of channels for citizens’ representatives to petition the Election Commission.
The Congressional briefing billed itself as a platform for coordinated diaspora activism, uniting diverse religious, legal, and human rights organisations to spotlight what they view as a systemic assault on India’s democracy and pluralistic traditions. By mobilising international attention and policy advocacy, the convening body aims to hold accountable those responsible for disenfranchisement and exclusion, pledging continued vigilance and action to safeguard the rights of minorities and restore democratic norms in India.
