SIR

The Wire confuses correlation with causation, leans on speculative no SIR models, and ignores that TMC won 13 of the 20 Assembly seats that recorded the highest number of voter deletions.

Several foreign media publications covered the BJP’s thumping victory, though not without peddling propaganda about the victorious party’s ‘Hindu nationalist’ ideology, ‘Muslim minority under threat’ bogey and falsehoods about the pre-poll SIR exercise.

Gulshan Colony, with a population of almost 200,000 individuals, reported merely 3,000 registered voters during the SIR drive.

The "highest-ever poll participation since Independence" in Bengal and Tamil Nadu was commended by the Election Commission

The objective of SIR is simple and non-negotiable: no eligible Indian citizen should be left out, and no ineligible, duplicate, deceased, or shifted person should remain on the list.

In the BBC article headlined, “Political turmoil in Indian border state as nine million lose voting rights”, Bhattacharya pushed a border state panic narrative and framed the name deletions as a politically motivated “loss of voting rights” that could “shape state policies”. Staying true to the objective of the propaganda piece, the Kolkata-based ‘independent journalist’ emphasised on the imaginary targeting of Muslims.