‘Unmistakable rigging’: Kerala unit of Congress alleges 128 NDA wins engineered through voter deletions

Kozhikode: Kerala Congress has launched a sharp attack on the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA), alleging that the coalition’s emphatic victory in the 2025 Bihar Assembly elections was aided by large-scale voter deletions carried out during the Election Commission’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) drive.

In a detailed analysis released on Saturday, the party claimed that 128 of the NDA’s 202 winning seats showed a direct correlation between deleted voters and razor-thin victory margins.

According to the Congress, this pattern points to a deliberate purge of “living, legitimate voters” under the garb of SIR.

The party said it reached its conclusion after examining the voter-deletion data recently made public by the Election Commission of India (ECI) following Supreme Court directions.

“128 seats out of the 202 won by the NDA came purely from SIR-based voter deletions… The pattern is unmistakable,” Kerala Congress posted on X, alleging that the exercise disproportionately impacted poor and marginalised communities.

Congress also argued that the stated purpose of the SIR drive — identifying illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, Myanmar, and Nepal — fell flat when “not even a single illegal immigrant” was flagged in the released dataset.

Instead, the party alleges the revision exercise was used to disenfranchise voters who, it claims, were likely to vote against the NDA.

“What actually happened was a wholesale purge… They struck off genuine voters, restricted those remaining from voting, and walked away with a fully stage-managed election,” the Congress statement noted.

Taking a swipe at Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s frequent invocation of India as the “mother of democracy,” the party warned that voter roll manipulation could become routine if not checked immediately.

“If we don’t recognise the game plan now, BJP will quietly remove each one of us from the list, add dummy Brazilians in our place, cast votes, and keep winning elections forever,” the post said in a caustic remark aimed at the ruling party.

The NDA, meanwhile, dismissed the allegations. Union Minister Chirag Paswan reprimanded the Mahagathbandhan for what he described as habitual blame-shifting.

“Instead of introspecting, they keep attacking EVMs, officials, and the system. If they spent even half that energy on self-assessment, results would be different,” he said, adding that voters in Bihar “do not tolerate personal attacks that cross limits.”

The 2025 Bihar verdict delivered a sweeping mandate to the NDA, which secured 202 seats in the 243-member House. The BJP bagged 89 seats, while JD(U) secured 85.

The Mahagathbandhan, led by the RJD and Congress, suffered heavy losses, and Prashant Kishor’s Jan Suraaj failed to open its account.

Despite the strong mandate, the Congress insists the results cannot be viewed as reflective of the people’s will until a deeper probe into SIR-linked deletions is undertaken.