By statetimes
It has often been said that the true test of a political formation lies not in the slogans it chants, but in the silence it maintains. The INDIA bloc-a loose confederation of regional ‘leaders’ with a rapidly fading Congress party-has, once again, chosen to speak in panicked tones where silence might have served it better. The controversy surrounding SIR (Special Intensive Revision) has offered more than just a bureaucratic or procedural flashpoint. It has become a moral mirror, and one in which the INDIA bloc finds itself unable to look without wincing.
At its core, SIR is a measure to protect the most sacred aspect of Indian democracy-the integrity of the voter roll. It seeks not to target communities but to identify those who have entered the republic through extra-constitutional means and subsequently altered the balance of both demography and democracy.
The INDIA bloc claims to be the guardian of democracy, secularism, and constitutional morality. But scratch the surface, and a disturbing pattern emerges -a pattern that reveals not democratic idealism, but demographic opportunism. The fierce opposition to the Election Commission’s SIR exercise exposes the bloc’s most uncomfortable truth: it sees illegal migrants and infiltrators not as threats to national security, but as assets to its electoral arithmetic.
At the forefront of this resistance stand three familiar faces-Mamata Banerjee, Tejashwi Yadav, and Rahul Gandhi. All three leaders have launched scathing attacks on the SIR, labelling it a “conspiracy”, a “targeted operation”, and an “anti-minority witch hunt”. But the real question is, what are they trying to hide?For them, the voter is no longer a citizen, but a statistic, one to be preserved not for their rights, but for their reliability in the voting booth. Mamata Banerjee’s hyperventilation against the SIR is telling. Here is a Chief Minister who once brazenly claimed that “one crore people in Bengal are already illegal migrants”-only to now call voter list verification an “ethnic cleansing exercise”.
Her paranoia is not unfounded. Bengal’s border districts-Malda, Murshidabad, North 24 Parganas-are ground zero for unchecked migration. Over the years, her government has looked the other way as entire villages have been settled by illegal Bangladeshi entrants and Rohingyas, who are then given ration cards, Aadhaar IDs, and ultimately voter cards. SIR threatens to dismantle this vote bank empire. Lashing out at Mamata Banerjee in a meeting, Prime Minister Narendra Modi asserted a stern message. He stated, “In West Bengal, Trinamool, of its self-interest is putting Bengali identity at stake.Infiltration has increased, with a forged documents eco-system developed by the TMC. Bengal and the country’s safety and security are at stake.”
In Bihar, Tejashwi Yadav’s resistance to SIR reeks of desperation. With Lalu Prasad’s brand of caste calculus running out of steam, the RJD has been silently banking on demographic shifts in Seemanchal and border belts to tip the scales. And SIR now threatens to pull the plug.
Rahul Gandhi, as always, speaks of “protecting the soul of India”. But this soul-searching has no space for national security, demographic stability, or voter legitimacy. The Congress’ silence on illegal migration is not just strategic – it’s suicidal. From Assam to Delhi, Congress governments in the past have either enabled or ignored infiltration. Now, stripped of its traditional base, the party sees the illegal vote as a survival strategy.
This is not the first time India has grappled with illegal immigration. From the days of Shyama Prasad Mookerjee, who warned against unchecked infiltration, to the Assam Accord, which tried in vain to draw a constitutional line, the Republic has always known that citizenship cannot be based on convenience. But the INDIA bloc, true to its nature, has chosen to peddle old rhetoric: that SIR is an attack on minorities, that it is a communal ploy, that it seeks to divide. This is not conviction-it is camouflage.
The real fear is that SIR will unveil how deeply the electoral base in several eastern constituencies has been distorted by undocumented and politically nurtured settlements. That it will expose how entire Assembly segments were engineered not by democratic mobilisation, but by demographic manipulation.
There is a deeper philosophical question here-one that the INDIA bloc seems incapable of answering. What does citizenship mean in a post-Partition, plural republic like India?
If everyone who enters becomes indistinguishable from the citizen, if the sanctity of borders can be dissolved with political intent, and if voting rights can be quietly handed out in exchange for electoral returns, then we must ask: what remains of the nation?
The INDIA bloc’s refusal to support SIR is not rooted in ideology. It is rooted in the absence of one. Their politics thrives not on the strength of an idea, but on the preservation of ambiguity, illegality, and vote bank arithmetic.In a democracy that values transparency, legitimacy, and the rule of law, SIR is not just a policy tool-it is an act of national introspection. It calls upon the state to ask: Who belongs? And perhaps more importantly, who doesn’t?
That the INDIA bloc has chosen to oppose this is neither surprising nor new. It merely confirms what the public has long suspected -that this alliance has no vision for India, only a strategy to retain fragments of it.
In that sense, SIR has done more than trigger a political storm.
It has exposed the intellectual, political and ethical bankruptcy of a coalition long past its expiry date. And in doing so, it may have offered the Republic a chance – however fraught – to reclaim its original promise and infiltrators? If the SIR is allowed to succeed, it won’t just clean up electoral rolls. It will clean up the political rot that feeds on ghost votes and silent demographics. And that’s exactly why the INDIA bloc is terrified, because when the illegal vote dies, their politics dies with it.
(The columnist is a noted writer and journalist)
