90 Muslim voters deleted from electoral rolls in BJP-ruled Rajasthan after delimitation
Jaipur : Ninety Muslim voters in Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP)-ruled Rajasthan state have been removed from the electoral rolls following a delimitation exercise that shifted their neighborhood into a municipal constituency, in what the affected families describe as deliberate disenfranchisement despite having voted there for decades.
According to Kashmir Media Service, the affected voters belong to the Muslim Madari community, a historically marginalized Muslim group traditionally associated with itinerant entertainment and performance work, in Ward 2 of Niwai municipality in Rajasthan’s Tonk district. Their names disappeared from the electoral register after delimitation transferred the area where they live from the Chainpura village council to the municipality.
The mass deletion following delimitation has raised questions over whether a routine restructuring of electoral boundaries has been used to disenfranchise a marginalized Muslim community, particularly because residents say they remained in the same homes while the administrative jurisdiction around them changed.
Rup Ali, speaking on behalf of the community, said the affected families had lived in the area for about 40 years and had regularly cast ballots in national and state elections when their neighborhood was administered as part of Chainpura.
Ali said the local election official responsible for verifying and maintaining voter records had intentionally removed the names. He said educational access remains limited among many families and that members of the community continue to earn their livelihoods through traditional performances.
Hundreds of men and women from Ward 2 marched to government offices in Niwai to protest the deletions and demand that election authorities restore the 90 names. The protesters submitted a petition to local official Srishti Jain and demanded scrutiny of the booth-level election official responsible for voter registration in their ward. They argued that delimitation should merely have transferred their registration from the village electoral roll to the municipal one rather than stripping established voters from the register altogether. They said they remained at the same addresses where they had exercised their franchise for decades, while the government changed the jurisdiction in which those addresses fell.
Residents have threatened to intensify their protests and launch a hunger strike outside the local administrative office if authorities fail to restore their voting rights.
