Kharge, Jairam Ramesh Step Up Attack on Modi Govt Over SIR, Demand Data on ‘Infiltrators’

New Delhi, Oct 14 : Congress president and Leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge and Congress general secretary in-charge of communications Jairam Ramesh on Wednesday intensified their attack on the Narendra Modi government over the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, demanding accountability over alleged voter exclusions and seeking concrete figures on illegal immigrants.

The Congress leaders accused the BJP-led government of invoking the issue of illegal immigration to divert attention from what they described as the exclusion of crores of Indian citizens from electoral rolls. They also criticised the reported restrictions on protests at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi, alleging that such curbs undermined the constitutional right to dissent.

Kharge accused Union Home Minister Amit Shah of insulting Indian identity by referring to the 13.3 crore people allegedly left out of the SIR process as “infiltrators”. He demanded accountability for the electoral revision exercise and accused the government of shielding Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar.

In a post on social media platform X, Kharge described the alleged labelling of Indians excluded during SIR as infiltrators as an affront to their Indianness. Referring to a Supreme Court ruling, he also criticised the reported move to withdraw Jantar Mantar's status as a designated protest site.

“First vote theft, then theft of the right to protest,” Kharge said, accusing the BJP of pursuing an authoritarian agenda.

He alleged that people questioning the government were being jailed, young protesters were facing baton charges and detention, and women demonstrators were being subjected to police brutality. He also accused the authorities of allowing members of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) to operate without accountability.

“No one will bow before the repressive policies of Modi and Shah,” Kharge said, asserting that people would continue to raise their voices and hold the BJP accountable.

Ramesh, meanwhile, challenged Shah to provide figures substantiating the government's claims about illegal immigrants. He asked how many alleged infiltrators had been identified, how many had been removed from electoral rolls and how many had actually been deported from India.

In two posts on X, Ramesh said the government owed the public clear answers after nearly 100 crore Indians had been subjected to the SIR exercise. He maintained that citizens had the right to know how many suspected illegal immigrants had been detected and what action had been taken against them.

“The fact is that the infiltrator argument is given repeatedly by the architect of the Shah Instigated Removal (SIR) to divert attention from the reality of nearly 14 crore Indians being stripped of their constitutional right to vote,” Ramesh alleged, using the phrase to sharpen the Congress's criticism of the revision exercise.

He also questioned whether Shah was suggesting that the nearly 14 crore people cited by the Congress as having lost their voting rights were themselves infiltrators. Ramesh further asked whether the Home Minister's argument implied that the number of illegal immigrants had increased substantially during his tenure.

The latest remarks come amid the Congress's sustained campaign against SIR, which the party has described as a threat to universal adult suffrage and the constitutional right to vote. The opposition has alleged that large-scale deletions and stringent scrutiny of voter eligibility could disenfranchise genuine Indian citizens.

The BJP and the Election Commission, however, have defended the revision as necessary to maintain accurate electoral rolls and identify ineligible entries.

At the centre of the latest political confrontation is the distinction between correcting electoral rolls and identifying and deporting foreign nationals residing illegally in India. By seeking separate figures for detection, deletion and deportation