Shikha Mukerjee | Will INDIA’s ‘Shock’ Tactics Work Amid Bihar SIR Row?

Not in recent times has a turnout by the combined Opposition parties produced such “shock and awe” as the visibility of the unity of the INDIA bloc’s constituents did when 300 Members of Parliament collectively attempted to march to the Election Commission’s office on August 11. The compulsion to be seen as a participant had the Aam Aadmi Party turning up even after it announced its exit from the INDIA bloc, prompting the BJP to predict that the unholy alliance was doomed to break up.

Rarely has the credibility of the Opposition’s position, that the deletion of 65 lakh voters through the Special Intensive Revision of voters list in Bihar by the EC, amounting to “doing away with citizens’ right to vote”, been so categorically confirmed, albeit indirectly, by a Supreme Court order. By directing the Election Commission to publish, upload and widely inform the public the names of those deleted and the grounds for cancellation of the right to vote, it tacitly accepted Yogendra Yadav’s “excellent analysis”, as Justice Surya Kant described it.

By championing the people’s right to vote, “One Man-One Vote”, the Opposition challenged the contention of the BJP and its helmsman, Narendra Modi, that he and the BJP are the only true pro-people leaders in the country. The Delhi rally and arrests have the potential to shift public perception by making the BJP appear anti-people and the Opposition pro-people, altering the narrative of Mr Modi and the BJP that the INDIA bloc partners are anti-people corruption-ridden dynastic parties out to cheat the people and feather their own nests. One swallow does not make it summer; one rally in Delhi doesn’t transform the INDIA bloc partners into squeaky clean bleeding hearts for the poor, marginalised, minorities and economically vulnerable.

The EC’s call to the Opposition to “show the proof or apologise” is the sort of challenge that street boys in a silly fight hurl at each other. It doesn’t behove the EC to lob the ball back into the Opposition’s court and demand apologies. For the EC to come clean and be seen to be clean, it should have explained its reasons for deleting the names of 65 lakh voters in Bihar; its intensive search for illegal immigrant voters and not just bogus or false voters.

The EC’s day out and the start of the 1,300-km yatra on “Vote Chori” with Rahul Gandhi, Tejashwi Yadav and other INDIA bloc leaders is a measure of how jittery chief election commissioner Gyanesh Kumar is about the charge. The credibility of the Bihar election and all subsequent elections are at stake; the institution set up by the Constitution to oversee fair and free elections, protect democracy, and ensure every adult Indian enjoys the right to vote, is under the spotlight.

The combination of the protests and the clarity with which the Opposition parties attacked the EC’s procedures for the Bihar SIR and the Supreme Court’s order, isolates the BJP as an organisation, along with its National Democratic Alliance partners. As the only party that did not question or object to the EC’s SIR, the BJP stands out as the sole defender of what the Supreme Court’s order addressed, the irrationality of non-disclosure. “Since this action can have some civil consequences of depriving a citizen or a person of the right to franchise, a fair procedure is required,” Justice Surya Kant observed.

Amid an unprecedented number of political setbacks that have cornered the BJP and the Modi government’s performance, 2025 has been, till now, about the worst year. Opposition unity in picking up the failures of omission and commission of the government by holding it to account, inside and outside Parliament, and dented the image of a strong government led by a capable leader fully in control of the forces that create ripples for India, some small and some large enough to be dangerous. The Modi government has been challenged over the details of how the Pahalgam killings happened, which remains a bit of a mystery, the opacity over how Operation Sindoor was conducted, its outcomes and its cost and who brokered the ceasefire, and the quagmire into which India has waded with eyes wide open on tariffs imposed by the United States, affecting dollar-earning exports, including shrimps, resulting in fears of declining incomes for marginalised fishing communities, up and down the east coast, from West Bengal to Tamil Nadu.

When 300 Opposition MPs hit the streets in New Delhi on August 11, it became clear that the Modi government, for all its bluster, were not the people in control. The Opposition’s line-up was star-studded, with the venerable Sharad Pawar and the veteran Mallikarjun Kharge present, and the entire younger generation leadership of the principal INDIA bloc parties visible and demonstrating that the “people united will never be defeated”. The piano composition by American composer Frederic Rzewski was, incidentally, in response to the Chilean people’s struggles against the authoritarian Salvador Allende and then Augusto Pinochet regimes.

The fightback over SIR could be a watershed in Opposition politics. The issue -- the SIR that potentially disenfranchises lakhs of voters in Bihar -- is not a routine bout in the intensely competitive politics of elections in India. It is, at one level, a confrontation over people’s freedoms and constitutional guarantees. The issue transforms the Opposition’s role into a resistance against depriving people of their rights, in other words, a movement to defend the rights of people.

At another level, it challenges and seems to have done so successfully, the Modi-led BJP’s claims to represent 140 crore Indians, of which the just under 7.89 crore voters of Bihar, of whom 65 lakhs are threatened with disenfranchisement, are a subset. It does, however, visibly demonstrate the power of the unified Opposition to present itself as a pro-people force, a political alternative with the potential to be viable.

How the BJP handles its political isolation on the SIR issue is a problem that Narendra Modi has to deal with in the coming Bihar election. There is always the possibility that the BJP can get away with it as the Opposition’s unity is unpredictable.

Bihar elections are unusual in that it has always attracted and held public attention, nationwide. In some ways, it has proved to be a bellwether state in the very chaotic political scene in India. This is an issue where the BJP’s attack machine has been ineffective against the Opposition’s “Ek Hain to Safe” tactics of unity is strength and it is the true defender of democracy, of which the right to vote is the bedrock.