New Delhi: Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP)’s agents have attempted mass deletion of Muslim voters from the electoral rolls in the coastal town of Bhadrak, in north-east Odisha, during the Election Commission of India’s  (ECI) ongoing statewide voter revision exercise. 

The Reporters’ Collective accessed records of the illegal attempt by BJP Booth-level agents (BLAs) in Bhadrak assembly constituency to en-masse strike-off Muslim voters. We separately confirmed from multiple sources, including BJP agents that such an attempt has been made. 

In Bhadrak we found several BLAs had filed applications to the district administration for review of hundreds of Muslim voters. We confirmed the attempt to mass-delete Muslim voters in Bhadrak not only from the filed records but also by speaking to some BJP agents. 

Telltale signs of a coordinated attempt to identify and delete Muslim voters in the constituency were evident with the digitally-filled forms submitted by BJP across booths. 

Booth level officers in Bhadrak that we interviewed claimed that Muslim dominated booths were targeted for this systematic purge. Officers interviewed claimed at least 30 booths have been targeted. All had more than 90 percent Muslim voters. 

The en masse attempts suggest a coordinated attack by BJP agents in the district. The ECI does not segregate voters by religions or other identities on its voter database. Such mass-scale attempts to delete voters requires the party and its agents to identify Muslim voters from the ECI database purposefully and then target them. 

ECI permits political parties to register its workers as BLAs to support the voter revision exercise. Their job is to identify voters and ensure their voting rights are registered correctly. 

Filing of fake and wrongful applications for voter deletion is illegal. But, in several cases we found the district administration has instead accepted the mass deletion applications and asked its staff, working as booth-level officials under ECI, to verify all these Muslim voters. 

Members of the opposition party, Biju Janata Dal (BJD) and several voters who were flagged for deletion, have filed formal complaints against these attempted deletions. Yet, election officials have so far not opened an inquiry and have instead asked ground staff to verify the very claims by BJP agents.

The targeting of Muslim voters by BJP agents and party members echoes similar efforts the party made in Bihar, Rajasthan, Gujarat and Assam during the first two phases and in Uttarakhand in the current phase. We had reported on the attempt to delete more than  80,000 muslim voters in one constituency in Bihar in the first phase. Media outlets, Newslaundry, Scroll and The Quint reported on the attempts made in the latter phases.

Operation Delete

The Special Intensive Revision was announced by the ECI in June 2025 to be conducted nationwide, redoing the country's electoral rolls from scratch and taking the 2002–2004 voter rolls as the baseline.

So far, the Commission has completed revision of voter rolls across thirteen states and union territories, across two phases. Odisha is one of 19 states and union territories currently undergoing the third and final phase of the special intensive revision.

The Collective has confirmed that officially-designated agents and party members of the Bharatiya Janata Party have filed mass requests for the deletion of Muslim voters in booths across the Bhadrak assembly constituency where Muslims comprise large numbers.

The constituency was won by BJP in the last round by a margin of 16,068 votes and by BJD in the round previous to that by a margin of 33,389 votes.

The Collective has confirmed that BJP collectively booth-level agents have submitted deletion requests en masse with the district election authority. 

These Agents have individually and together filed hundreds of requests for deletion exclusively of Muslim voters using Form 7, a statutory document that any registered voter can use to request the removal of an individual from the electoral roll. We reviewed several of these applications independently to confirm.

Booth-level officers, the ECI’s ground-level workers, and Biju Janata Dal party workers interviewed by The Collective stated, in their knowledge, BJP agents had filed mass deletions in at least 30 booths in the Bhadrak assembly constituency. All of these booths they claimed had a large percentage of Muslim voters. 

With each booth more than a hundred requests for deletions have been received per booth. The number of voters per booth in Bhadrak range between 400-1,100 therefore the potential deletion of such a large number of voters can make an immense difference.

Filing false information through Form 7 is a criminal offense. Those filing such information can be jailed up to one year, under Section 31 of the Representation of the Peoples’ Act.

ECI’s rules allow unlimited submission of Form 7 deletion requests per applicant. However, to limit bulk deletion requests, ECI restricts booth agents to filing only 10 forms a day. If a booth level agent files more than 30 Form 7 requests during the roll revision period, this will also trigger additional verification from the Electoral Registration Officer (ERO). 

In January, Trinamool Congress raised an issue with the Election Commission that the BJP was filing bulk deletion requests during the SIR in Bengal. At the time, ECI orally clarified that if the authorities received more than five deletion requests per applicant, it would trigger an additional review from the ERO. ECI’s clarification was reported in the media. There is no written record of this change in rules in any of ECI’s publicly available rules and manual.

The Biju Janata Dal has also formally complained to Bhadrak administration against these mass deletion requests targeting Muslim voters, calling the exercise by active BJP members a 'systematic and well-planned' attempt to 'falsely' remove Muslim voters from Muslim-majority booths. 

The party has also alleged that the forms were prepared not by hand but on a computer. We could independently verify that. Telltale signs of a coordinated sifting of Muslim voters from the voter database and targeting-based on religion was evident. 

Election officials in Bhadrak, as required by law, have not initiated any criminal action or investigation into the individuals named in the complaint. 

In fact, booth-level officers interviewed by The Collective claim that the Bhadrak sub-collector's office directed BLOs to conduct additional verifications for the Muslim voters flagged through Form 7 by BJP agents, despite the BLOs insisting these forms were fraudulent.

On the Ground 

Omar Usam (name changed on request) is a head BLO in Bhadrak, supervising 17 booths and their ground officers. After completing the first enrollment phase of the special intensive revision in Odisha last month, he hoped to take a well-deserved break. 

However, two weeks ago, he got calls from his booth officers who had panicked after a meeting at the sub-collector's office, Usam told us.

The district administration had summoned over thirty booth level officers and handed them 100-200 forms apiece to verify. All of these forms targeted Muslim voters, Usam claimed.

The BJP agents who had filed the deletion requests claimed the ECI booth-level officials had included these voters after door-to-door enumeration and verification exercise but all of these Muslim voters had either shifted, or were dead or had multiple voter IDs.

Usam said the BLOs told the sub-collector that the BJP agents' claims were false and they had already verified the voters. They initially refused to take up reverification of these Form 7 requests. But, the district sub-collector insisted they do so and submit a report to the district election office.

Omar Usam and his family were also targeted. Along with Usam, his two sons, and his daughter were flagged for removal by the BJP.

Across ten booths overseen by Usam, a total of 1,150 electors were flagged. Usam claimed that the seven-eight individuals that had filed these mass requests were all locally known workers of the BJP, some were booth level agents, local agents appointed by the political party to assist BLOs as well as voters in the voter registration process.

“My BLOs did not want to accept these claims because they were false. They had themselves verified these voters mere days ago. But district election officials insisted that additional verification will be conducted on the names that were red flagged.”

According to the BLO’s handbook published by the ECI, a BLO must conduct a preliminary verification exercise to verify a Form 7 complaint before it is forwarded to the district election administration or the Electoral Roll Officer of the assembly constituency. But only if the Form 7 has not been filed in flagrant violation of the law to begin with. 

In Bhadrak, this protocol turned on its head. Thousands of Form 7 requests were submitted directly to the district election offices. BLOs were given strict directions to take up these requests despite their refusal claiming they were false. 

Usam submitted his report to the district officials. We reviewed a copy of his report. He, as expected, found that all the targeted Muslim voters were legitimate. 

This is not the first time that the BJP has attempted systematic deletion of exclusively Muslim voters under the guise of the special intensive revision. Similar attempts have been made across states. 

Despite these reports, there are no known instances of the ECI pursuing criminal indictments against individuals who filed mass Form 7 deletion requests targeting Muslim voters. 

The BJP's attempts to weaponise Form 7 against Muslim and minority voters continue to come to light. 

The Collective inspected the mass complaints filed by the two named BJP agents. Deletion requests were filed exclusively against Muslim names, we confirmed. One of the agents who had filed these deletion requests confirmed via WhatsApp that he is a member of the BJP. 

We reviewed and found several sections of the form that otherwise had to be filled out by hand were pre-printed, including the name of the flagged voter and their ward or address. The complainants had merely filled in their names, mobile numbers, and signatures, suggesting that these complaints were indeed systematic and computer-generated.

The Collective has also reviewed five First Information Reports (FIRs) filed with the Superintendent of Police (SP) in Bhadrak against two individuals. These voters claim they were wrongfully flagged for removal. In interviews with two of these voters, both confirmed that they are facing illegal attempts to remove them from the electoral rolls.

The Collective has directly confirmed that this exercise of mass deletion took place in at least ten booths by inspecting mass Form 7 applications and interviewing BLOs. 

Detailed questions were sent to the District Collectorate, the Chief Electoral Officer of Odisha, and the Election Commission of India. None of them responded.

“The Election Commission of India and the district administration must properly verify the malpractice being carried out through Form No. 7. Strict legal action should be taken against the objectors who are harassing people as part of a conspiracy, and all such bogus Form No. 7 applications should be cancelled,” said Gulmaki Dalwazi Habib, chairwoman of Bhadrak municipality. She won the March 2022 civic elections as an independent candidate, making history as the first Muslim woman to head a municipal body in Odisha, and later joined the BJD in 2024. Her press conference making these claims was reported earlier.