In 1894, Mahatma Gandhi described the Franchise Law Amendment Bill as “a legislative activity of retrograde character” and launched a heroic struggle against it after it was introduced in the Natal Assembly of South Africa by white rulers to take away the restricted voting rights of Indians on specious grounds.

In his book Satyagraha in South Africa he wrote, “There is always a general presumption in favour of the right of the subject. So long, therefore, as the government of the day does not become positively hostile, the names of Indians and others could be included in the electoral roll, the above law notwithstanding.”

Disenfranchising Indians in South Africa in 1894 and disenfranchisement under SIR

Eventually Indians in Natal Province were disenfranchised by the machinations of White rulers. It is tragic that what the White rulers did in 1894 in South Africa in disenfranchising Indians has been done to West Bengal’s 2.7 million voters whose names have been removed from the electoral roll of the state for no fault of theirs and half a million added to it in an opaque manner by the Election Commission of India (ECI) headed by Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar.

This disenfranchisement of millions of voters compels one to call the SIR process, in the words of Gandhi an “activity of retrograde character.” 

How deletion of millions of voters helped BJP

The results of West Bengal elections declared on May 4 affirm the victory of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) which won 207 out of 294 assembly seats in contrast to the Trinamool Congress’s 80.

Based on the ECI data,........

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