Parrots, Shakuni and 'foreign powers': the voter-list fight deserves better words from both sides

Rahul Gandhi brought a parrot to Ramlila Maidan on Sunday. “The king’s life was in the parrot,” he told the INDIA bloc rally, “and Modi ji’s life is in Gyanesh Kumar.” Mallikarjun Kharge promised not to let “a government of theft” run. Mamata Banerjee led a chant of “Vote-chori yes papa”, casting the Chief Election Commissioner as the BJP’s obedient child, and Tejashwi Yadav reached for Shakuni and his loaded dice.

The BJP answered in kind. Before the speeches had even begun, J P Nadda called the gathering “a calculated conspiracy to plunge the nation into anarchy” and said its fourth stage was “attempting to destabilise an elected government at the behest of foreign powers”. By evening Sambit Patra was calling Rahul Gandhi “an illegal Leader of Opposition” and the rally a flop show, and party leaders had spent the day reminding Congress of 1984.

It was a long day of good lines. It was a poor day for voters who want to know whether their names are safe on the rolls.

What each side gets right

Strip out the insults and both camps make points that deserve an answer.

The opposition’s grievance is real in its shape, whatever one thinks of its size. It says 13.2 crore names were deleted in the Special Intensive Revision. A notice to begin removing the CEC, signed by 193 MPs, was refused in April without public reasons. When the formal route is shut, protest moves to the street, and the street rewards theatre.

The BJP’s sharpest reply was also its fairest. Patra pointed out that if the 2024 election was stolen, the place to say so is a court, and asked whether anyone had filed a single petition. He noted, correctly, that Gyanesh Kumar was not CEC in 2024; he took charge in 2025. Rahul Gandhi’s claim that without Kumar “neither Narendra Modi would have become Prime Minister nor Amit Shah would have become Home Minister” does not survive that date.

Where both go too far

Calling an elected government a “government of theft”, and an election commissioner a puppet, before showing a single wrongful deletion in a named booth, asks voters to take a very large claim on trust. Calling the country’s main opposition parties agents of unnamed “foreign powers”, with no evidence offered, is worse: it turns a disagreement about voter lists into a question of loyalty. Neither helps a woman in Pilibhit or in Bengal find out whether she can vote.

The fair objection

Rallies are not seminars. Every party, in power or out, uses colourful language at a crowd, and Indian politics has survived far harsher words than a parrot or a nursery rhyme. Asking for restraint can sound like asking the weaker side to keep quiet.

That is fair up to a point. Sharp words are part of democracy; charges of treason and theft, made without proof, wear down the trust that elections depend on.

What should happen now

First, the opposition should put its evidence where its words are: lists of named voters it says were wrongly struck off, booth by booth, filed with the Commission and, where it believes an election was affected, in court.

Second, BJP leaders should either produce the “foreign powers” they spoke of or stop saying it. Amit Shah, due to lead a padyatra in Karnal on Thursday, has a chance to set the tone.

Third, the Election Commission, which says it has acted without bias, should publish the reason for every SIR deletion, by booth, so that both sides argue over the same numbers.

Fourth, the special session of Parliament that Mr Shah offered last week remains the right room for this quarrel. A debate on the record is the best cure for a rally on loudspeakers.

The reporting behind this view

• 13.2 crorevoters the opposition says were deleted in the Special Intensive Revision
• 193MPs who signed a notice to begin removing the CEC, refused in April
• 2025the year Gyanesh Kumar took charge as Chief Election Commissioner