Although the goal of the RSS-BJP is to declare India a Hindu Rashtra, achieving this is not an easy task, as it would require radical and substantial changes to the Constitution. When the Election Commission of India removed about 13.37 crore names from the electoral rolls at the end of the third round of SIR (Special Intensive Revision), some people began to ask: "Is this a shortcut to convert India into a Hindu Rashtra?"

SIR is officially presented as a process to remove the names of deceased, duplicate, shifted and otherwise ineligible voters and to ensure that eligible citizens remain on the electoral rolls. However, the danger arises if large numbers of genuine citizens, particularly economically vulnerable people, migrants, minorities, the poor, and those unable to produce the required documentation, are excluded from the electoral rolls. A person may remain a citizen while effectively losing one of the most important instruments through which citizenship is exercised: the right to vote.

In this context, Parakala Prabhakar, a renowned political economist, characterises SIR as a "bloodless political genocide of citizenship" in an interview with MK Venu published in The Wire on September 9, 2026. He explained that since the state cannot physically push minorities or marginalised groups out of the country or eliminate them without mass bloodshed, it instead kills their citizenship by stripping them of their right to vote.

He also argued that SIR reverses the democratic dynamic: instead of voters electing the government, the government is effectively choosing its own voters by purging sections of the electorate, specifically targeting minorities, Dalits, Adivasis, the poor, and women from all categories, who are unlikely to vote for the ruling party. According to him, SIR is a device for reducing the country's pluralistic fabric to a "democracy of the few, for the few" and paving the way for a consolidated majoritarian polity.

Some independent reports and data analyses of the SIR conducted by the Election Commission of India (ECI) indicate that voters with Muslim names have been disproportionately deleted relative to their population share in certain regions. Clear examples can be cited from Hyderabad in Telangana and Muslim-dominated districts of West Bengal, such as Murshidabad, Malda and North Dinajpur.

For example, a data analysis published on September 2, 2026, by the Sabar Institute and the Constitutional Guardians Forum reviewed 19.4 lakh voters marked for deletion across Hyderabad's 15 Assembly constituencies. The study found that 40.7% of the flagged names were identified as Muslim. Bahadurpura Assembly constituency recorded the highest proportion, with 85.9% of the deleted voter names being Muslim.

Additionally, a state-wide analysis by Siasat.com on September 6, 2026, estimated that 14.9 lakh Muslim-named voters across Telangana were left off the draft SIR rolls, accounting for roughly 20.3% of the total Muslim names in the state's electoral rolls. As Muslims constitute approximately 12.56% to 12.75% of Telangana's total population, their deletion is 7.55 to 7.74 percentage points higher than their share of the state's population.

The SIR results from West Bengal also present more or less the same picture. A report in The Hindu on April 9, 2026, revealed that out of 90 lakh names removed in West Bengal, 34% (31.1 lakh) belonged to Muslims, while 63% (57.47 lakh) belonged to Hindus. Thus, the Muslim deletion rate was 7% higher than their 27% share of the state's population, according to the 2011 Census.

Independent reports, including data published by the BBC and regional watchdogs, indicate that 13% of Murshidabad's total electoral roll was struck off. In absolute numbers, this accounts for 7,49,000 deletions across the district's 22 Assembly constituencies. The BBC reported that the deletions in Murshidabad "broadly reflected its demographics," meaning that the religious composition of the deleted list closely aligned with the district's population. Since Murshidabad is roughly 66% Muslim according to Census data, Muslims therefore constituted the overwhelming share of the total 7,49,000 deletions.

Shivasundar, columnist and activist, in an article published in The Wire on September 5, 2026, analysed the pattern of vote deletions in Karnataka during the SIR and came to the following conclusion:
"A thorough study of the pattern of deletion with respect to backwardness of regions, districts having more than the state average SC-ST populations and also of the districts and talukas which have more than average Muslim population provides clear testimony of how the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls is not directed towards elimination of ineligible or illegal foreign migrants but Indian masses who are from poor, marginalised and vulnerable sections."

It is also a fact that the refusal to accept standard identity documents, such as PAN cards, driving licences, ration cards, or MGNREGA job cards, heavily penalises illiterate and underprivileged sections of the population who lack historical lineage documentation.

The alleged misuse of Form 7 deletion requests is another reason cited for the mass deletion of names belonging to particular communities. For example, in states such as Uttarakhand and Jharkhand, investigations revealed fraudulent mass filing of Form 7 objections. Hundreds of applications targeting minority voters, primarily Muslims, were submitted using forged signatures or by misusing the credentials of booth agents.

An Indian Express report dated September 2, 2026, based on an investigation in Godda district of Jharkhand, highlighted cases in which political booth agents submitted stacks of Form 7 applications targeting specific minority demographics. An official administrative probe was launched, and a BJP booth agent was briefly detained after submitting roughly 200 bulk deletion forms at a single village booth.

Another issue raised by critics concerns the identification of illegal migrants from Bangladesh. The Election Commission of India (ECI) and the Modi government introduced the SIR hurriedly just before the Assembly elections in Bihar, with the main objective of identifying and expelling illegal migrants. However, the ECI appears to have evaded the question of how many illegal migrants have so far been identified through the SIR.

In this context, the sarcastic comment of SY Quraishi, former Chief Election Commissioner, on the SIR process is very pertinent.
"I would like to complement the Election Commission for completing a very difficult mission of eliminating about 14-15 crore population of India through this exercise. I don't know how many illegal migrants they have found, which was the main purpose of this exercise. It is a pity that they have not disclosed this figure."

Thus, various studies and analyses of the process of deleting names from the electoral rolls through SIR indicate that its purpose is more a matter of mass disenfranchisement of citizens than the stated objective of "purification" of the electoral rolls and removal of duplicate, deceased or shifted voters.

What Shivasundar states in his article seems relevant.
"SIR is just another Hindutva disenfranchisement exercise aimed to build a Hindutva Republic undoing the Indian Republic realised through Indian constitution and freedom movement."

Against this backdrop, many critics of SIR refer to MS Golwalkar's statement in his book We or Our Nationhood Defined. The RSS-BJP honours him with the title "Guruji," as he is regarded as one of the most significant ideologues of the RSS and Hindutva.

"The foreign races in Hindusthan must either adopt the Hindu culture and language, must learn to respect and hold in reverence Hindu religion, must entertain no idea but those of the glorification of the Hindu race and culture, i.e., of the Hindu nation and must lose their separate existence to merge in the Hindu race, or may stay in the country, wholly subordinated to the Hindu Nation, claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, far less any preferential treatment-not even citizen's rights" (Original 1939 Edition: Pages 47-48).

There is sufficient ground to suspect that the mass deletion of the names of Muslims through SIR is a method of realising the vision of Golwalkar: A Hindu Rashtra in which Muslims and Christians would be treated as non-citizens without rights or privileges. The mass deletion of the votes of minorities and underprivileged groups gives a definite advantage to the BJP in winning elections and remaining in power for a long time. At the same time, it serves the purpose of achieving the goal of transforming India into a Hindu Rashtra without changing the Constitution of India.
Against this backdrop, the appeal of Parakala Prabhakar in his interview with MK Venu appears to be relevant:
"Election Commission's complicity requires an urgent, mass public mobilisation against these unprecedented actions".