Is SIR ethnic cleansing for a customised voter roll? | In Focus podcast

From the beginning, civil society and section of political parties have questioned an exercise of such enormous scale, one that was presented as an effort to clean up the electoral rolls and identify suspected foreign nationals, but has already led to more than 13 crore names being deleted at the draft stage.Those concerns have now moved beyond the SIR, into the functioning of the Election Commission. A recent investigation report found that two of the three Election Commissioners raised formal objections 14 times in 10 months over decisions relating to electoral rolls and SIR, including the centralisation of the voter database.What do these objections reveal about the way SIR is being conducted, and about the institution overseeing it?Guest: Parakala Prabhakar, Economist and AuthorHost: Rishita KhannaEdited and published by Sharmada VenkatasubramanianListen to more In Focus podcasts: Published - September 25, 2026 04:47 pm IST