At a press conference in Jammu on Tuesday, BJP national vice-president Ram Madhav launched a sharp attack on the Congress and its leader Rahul Gandhi, accusing them of deliberately spreading false information about the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls. According to news agency Press Trust of India, Madhav said the Congress was raising the issue not because of genuine concern for voters, but because it had no ability to challenge the BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi in elections. He argued that the party had grown so weak electorally that it was now trying to create confusion and unrest instead of preparing for electoral battles. The SIR exercise, he explained, is a constitutional process meant to clean up voter lists, but the Congress was twisting it into a political controversy. Madhav went further and claimed that the Congress was no longer focused only on electoral politics; it was seeking to destabilise the country, weaken public trust in democratic institutions, and create disorder to capture power. He asserted that the party’s real objective was not to win through democratic means but to use chaos and misinformation as tools of political change. Such an approach, he said, would not succeed because the people of India would never stand with a party that wanted to undermine the nation’s democratic system. Madhav also accused opposition leaders of talking openly about regime change, drawing attention to political developments in Bangladesh and Nepal as models they apparently admired. He described these references as a clear signal that the Congress was thinking beyond constitutional politics and was ready to exploit instability for its own benefit.
Madhav’s remarks reflected a deep concern within the BJP about the Congress campaign against the electoral rolls exercise, and he did not hold back while describing what he saw as the opposition’s hidden intentions. He said Congress leaders were openly discussing regime change on television and social media, and this was not the language of a party that believed in democracy. In his view, the Congress was looking at how governments were changed in Bangladesh and Nepal and hoping to apply the same logic in India. He alleged that the party, unable to defeat the BJP and Prime Minister Modi in elections, had decided to resort to misinformation and political unrest. “Congress’s objective today is not to come to power through democratic means or by contesting elections. Instead, it is attempting to create disorder in the country, undermine public confidence in our democratic institutions and use unrest as a means to capture power,” he said, according to PTI. Madhav insisted that the people of the country would never allow such a strategy to succeed. He accused the Congress of trying to discredit India’s democratic system, which had earned international recognition as the world’s largest democracy over nearly eight decades of independence. By attacking the electoral process and constitutional institutions, he said, the Congress was doing a great disservice to the democratic traditions of the country. For Madhav, the row over the electoral roll revision was not a technical disagreement but a political battle about the very credibility of India’s institutions.
The BJP leader also dismissed the Congress-led protest in Delhi over the SIR process and countered it with an aggressive political strategy. He said that if the Congress could bring together fifty thousand people to spread false propaganda, the BJP would reach out to five lakh villages and tell the truth to one hundred crore voters. This was his way of saying that the Congress campaign would be met with a massive public outreach drive by the ruling party. Madhav argued that the Congress was using the SIR controversy to hide its own political failures and to create suspicion about the Election Commission. He maintained that the electoral roll revision was not an attack on voters but a necessary cleaning-up exercise. The same process, he said, had been completed in several states and was still pending in others, including Union Territories like Jammu and Kashmir. He pointed out that genuine grievances or discrepancies could be addressed through the procedures prescribed by the Election Commission, and there was no reason for the Congress to resort to protests and falsehoods. Madhav challenged the opposition to produce even one person who could stand before the public and say that his or her vote had been wrongly deleted. Despite all the campaigning and propaganda by the Congress, he said, the party had failed to bring forward a single such person. This, he argued, proved that the allegations were baseless and the entire exercise was being misrepresented for political gain.
Madhav also sought to explain the logic behind the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls, describing it as a routine and constitutionally established process. The purpose, he said, was to remove the names of deceased voters, people who had shifted residence, duplicate entries, individuals who could not be traced at their registered addresses, and illegally settled infiltrators. He said that almost ninety lakh people die in India every year, and therefore periodic revision of electoral rolls is necessary to keep the records accurate and credible. Without such a method, voter lists would become bloated with names of people who were no longer alive or entitled to vote. He also mentioned that the Election Commission had filed an affidavit before the Supreme Court explaining the details of the exercise and responding to allegations raised about the revision process. This, he said, showed that the entire matter was being handled transparently and within the constitutional framework. Madhav questioned the Congress’s claim that around thirteen crore names had been deleted, and dared the opposition to provide evidence of any such massive removal. He argued that the Congress was making numbers out of thin air and using them to frighten voters. In his view, the only purpose behind these claims was to create suspicion about the Election Commission and to undermine the credibility of the democratic process in India.
The press conference in Jammu was clearly an attempt by the BJP to take the political offensive on an issue that had gained traction among opposition parties. Madhav accused the Congress of trying to hide its political failures behind the SIR controversy and of speaking as if the only way to change the government was through unrest rather than elections. He said that the Congress was attempting to create instability in the country and turn public opinion against constitutional institutions. But he expressed confidence that the people would see through this strategy. He pointed out that the SIR exercise was still underway in many states and Union Territories, and anyone with a genuine complaint could approach the Election Commission through the proper process. He insisted that the Congress was not interested in solving problems; it was interested in creating a narrative of distrust. Madhav also made it clear that the BJP would not remain silent while the Congress spread what he called false propaganda against the electoral system. He said the party would go to every corner of the country to counter the misinformation campaign, and the answer would come not only from party workers but from the voters themselves. He described the Congress’s claims as empty and repeated that no one had come forward with a legitimate proof of having been wrongly removed from the voter list. According to him, the Congress had no moral or factual basis for its protests, and was only using this issue as a cover for its electoral irrelevance.
In the end, Madhav stood firm on his core message: every allegation levelled by Congress against the SIR process was false, and the exercise was intended only to clean up electoral rolls and rectify irregularities through a constitutionally established procedure. He said the BJP would counter what he described as the Congress’s misinformation campaign against the electoral process, electoral institutions and the democratic system itself. This was not just a technical defense of an administrative exercise; it was a political statement about how the BJP views the Congress’s strategy in the current phase of Indian politics. Madhav portrayed the Congress as a party that had lost faith in democracy because it had lost the ability to win elections. He suggested that the Congress was looking for shortcuts, including discrediting institutions and manufacturing public outrage. As he spoke, the ongoing controversy over electoral roll revision was clearly becoming another front in the larger political battle between the BJP and the opposition. Madhav’s response was designed to reassure BJP supporters that the government and the Election Commission had acted within the law, while also presenting the Congress as a party that would go to any length to unsettle the system. His assertion that the people would not allow the Congress to succeed was both a warning and a prediction. For the BJP, the SIR controversy was not simply about voter lists; it was about defending the credibility of Indian democracy itself, and Madhav made it clear that the party was prepared to take that message to every village and every voter in the country.