Before India Had a Constitution, It Had a Voter Roll

On a January morning in Navi Mumbai, 23-year-old Dalia Nouf Shaikh waited an hour in line to vote. When she reached the front, her name wasn’t on the list. “There are four people in the family and just one person’s name removed,” she told The Juggernaut. Nine months later, on October 10, she joined nationwide protests demanding the resignation of India’s Chief Election Commissioner, Gyanesh Kumar. Four policewomen dragged her into a van, bruising her knees and arms. She was one of thousands detained.

The Election Commission removed roughly 130 million names from electoral rolls since last year — close to one in seven voters. The Commission says it cleaned up dead, duplicate, and relocated voters and anyone wrongly removed can “enroll again.” Opposition parties say legitimate voters, particularly minorities, are being disenfranchised.

But years before it adopted its constitution, one of independent India’s first acts was to register every adult as a voter. Today, that voter roll is now part of a national fight over who counts. How did we get here? The Juggernaut spoke to voters, journalists, and protest leaders to find out.