Uttar Pradesh CM Yogi Adityanath has made the SIR exercise a political issue, claiming 1.27 crore Hindu voters are missing from electoral rolls while Muslim voter numbers have risen. The BJP is seeking voter inclusion and targeting SP’s PDA strategy as religious identity and caste mobilisation emerge as key themes ahead of the 2027 Assembly elections.
Lucknow: With the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections few months away, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has turned the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls into a political issue, alleging that Hindu voters are losing representation while the Muslim electorate is growing.
The Chief Minister’s repeated assertions appear to be part of the BJP’s effort to consolidate Hindu votes and counter the Samajwadi Party’s PDA (Backward, Dalit and Minority) strategy, which helped the opposition make significant gains in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
At an event in Ayodhya, Yogi claimed that 1.27 crore Hindu voters had disappeared from the Assembly electoral rolls following the revision, while the number of Muslim voters had increased by 1.65 per cent. He also pointed to discrepancies involving 66 lakh voters listed in panchayat electoral rolls but missing from Assembly lists. He further claimed that 55 lakh Hindus benefiting from government welfare schemes and 4.5 lakh voters in the 18-19 age group were missing from the electoral rolls.
The BJP has approached the Election Commission seeking the inclusion of eligible voters whose names are missing. The party has also asked its workers to monitor electoral rolls at the booth level.
However, the Chief Minister’s claims need independent verification. Electoral rolls undergo changes due to deaths, migration, duplicate entries and the inclusion of newly eligible voters. A decline in the number of names does not automatically establish discrimination against any community. Official data on deletions and their reasons will be crucial in determining the facts.
Politically, Yogi’s intervention is significant because it seeks to transform an administrative exercise into an issue of Hindu electoral strength.
The BJP’s concern stems partly from the 2024 Lok Sabha results, when its tally in Uttar Pradesh fell from 62 seats in 2019 to 33. The Samajwadi Party won 37 seats and the Congress six, demonstrating the effectiveness of Akhilesh Yadav’s PDA mobilisation.
Yogi’s earlier slogan, ‘Batenge toh Katenge’, was aimed at preventing Hindu votes from fragmenting along caste lines. His repeated 80:20 formulation also seeks to reinforce religious consolidation. The SIR controversy now provides another platform to revive this appeal.
The BJP has simultaneously stepped up its attack on the opposition over religious issues. Akhilesh Yadav’s announcement that he would visit the Ram temple in Ayodhya with his family on December 12 has prompted Yogi to demand an apology for the 1990 police firing on kar sevaks during Mulayam Singh Yadav’s tenure as Chief Minister.
The BJP has also targeted Congress leaders over their remarks concerning Diwali, accusing the opposition of appeasement politics.
These developments suggest that the ruling party wants religious identity to remain central to the election campaign while countering the opposition’s caste-based mobilisation.
