SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
In the world's largest democracy, India, a controversy over voter rolls has triggered protests. NPR's Diaa Hadid followed people who turned up in defiance of a government ban on gatherings and joins us now from New Delhi. Hey, Diaa.
DIAA HADID, BYLINE: Hi, Scott.
DETROW: So can you unpack for us what triggered these protests in the first place?
HADID: Yeah. India's Election Commission, which is an ostensibly independent body, had been undertaking a wide-ranging revision of voter rolls, which had listed nearly 980 million names.
DETROW: I mean, that is a lot of names - almost a billion names.
HADID: Yeah. It's the world's largest democracy, after all. And local media outlets found that as this revision progressed, more than 130 million people were either struck off the rolls or were threatened with deletion unless they could prove their identities or where they lived, or in some cases, if their parents or grandparents had been on voter rolls two decades ago. Now, NPR hasn't been able to confirm those precise numbers, but we've heard similar accounts. And these demands have hit India's most vulnerable the hardest - people who don't have time or money or know-how to get these documents.
DETROW: So what has the Election Commission said about this process?
HADID: It says it's following the law and that most of the people struck off voter lists had either shifted locations or had duplicate entries or had died. But it's hard to make sense of some of the deletions. Like, an 80-year-old man we met at one protest, Omakant Dhyani. He told us that he'd voted his whole life, and yet, he and half the voters in his village were struck off voter rolls.
OMAKANT DHYANI: (Speaking Hindi).
HADID: So critics accuse the election commissioner of seeking to disenfranchise people who are unlikely to vote for the ruling Hindu nationalist BJP Party, which is led by the prime minister, Narendra Modi. And amid this controversy, leaders of a popular youth movement called on people to protest, and the first big gathering was on Saturday in New Delhi.
DETROW: Did people follow through and show up?
HADID: Well, they did their best. Authorities cracked down. In New Delhi, they issued an order banning gatherings - even chanting was banned. And to drive home the point, authorities had rigged up loudspeakers to trees across downtown Delhi to politely announce the order.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER: Attention, please. Attention, please.
HADID: Thousands of police were deployed to barricade roads. Some trains were ordered to bypass the city entirely to prevent out-of-towners from coming. They shut down dozens of metro stations. They cut off the internet in parts of the city and detained protest leaders.
DETROW: Despite all that, though, the protests did still happen?
HADID: Yeah. People still turned up, even though riot police were rushing on to suspected protesters, holding them by the limbs and hauling them into buses.
(SOUNDBITE OF WHISTLES BLOWING)
HADID: Local media reported that some 2,500 people were removed. And that meant at any given time, we only saw a few dozen people gathered.
DETROW: Did they try again, then, after that?
HADID: They very much did try again. On Monday, thousands of people - many loyal to opposition parties - poured out onto the streets, and the police largely had to stand by.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTER: (Chanting in non-English language).
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: (Chanting in non-English language).
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTER: (Chanting in non-English language).
HADID: And protesters chanted, vote thieves, referring to the election commissioner who they accuse of being in cahoots with the government, a point they brought home in the next chant. Where will you find the election commissioner? In the house of the prime minister.
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: (Chanting in non-English language).
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTER: (Chanting in non-English language).
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: (Chanting in non-English language).
DETROW: What's the government response been?
HADID: Today, the powerful interior minister said that the allegation that they'd somehow disenfranchise voters had come from people who were unable to win elections, and leaders of a youth-led protest movement told people to wait for the next gathering. Analysts tell us they actually expect the government to crack down harder in coming days rather than relent, which would show weakness and invite more protests.
DETROW: That is NPR's Diaa Hadid in New Delhi. Thank you so much.
HADID: Thank you, Scott. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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