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. 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. 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. At the time, Jayapal had criticised restrictions imposed by the government in Jammu and Kashmir after the region’s special status was scrapped.
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.
