Trump cites India voter IDs as Modi purges electoral rolls
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- Donald Trump cited India's 2024 election — 646 million voters, under 1% voting by mail, all requiring photo IDs — to push Congress for the SAVE America Act mandating citizenship documentation and stricter voter-ID rules.
- SAVE America Act, passed by the Republican-controlled House in February, would require documentary proof of US citizenship for voter registration; the Brennan Center found voter-fraud rates of 0.0003–0.0025% in studied US elections.
- Rahul Gandhi alleged the Election Commission of India added fraudulent voters in Karnataka's Mahadevapura constituency, presenting cases of the same voter holding multiple IDs and challenging the ECI to release electronic rolls and CCTV footage.
- Congress Party alleged more than 2.5 million votes were 'stolen' in the 2024 Haryana state election, citing irregularities including identical photographs appearing on multiple voter IDs.
- Election Commission of India launched the Special Intensive Revision (SIR), removing 4.7 million names from Bihar's rolls after nearly 80 million voters were given weeks to verify eligibility.
- West Bengal's April 2026 SIR stripped voting rights from about 9 million people — 12% of registered voters — with Muslims making up 34% of deletions despite being 27% of the state's population.
- Economist Parakala Prabhakar warned SIR amounts to government choosing voters rather than voters choosing government, producing 'two classes of Indians' with and without franchise.
Why it matters: Trump is borrowing institutional legitimacy from an electoral system the Congress Party accuses of mass fraud, while a Modi-backed purge stripped 9 million West Bengalis — 34% Muslim despite being 27% of the population — from the rolls. Documentary-proof requirements that disenfranchise minorities in India would do the same under the SAVE Act at US scale.
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