Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav on Saturday launched a blistering attack on the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Uttar Pradesh, calling it “NRC in disguise” and accusing the BJP and the Election Commission of plotting to selectively delete voters who do not support the ruling party.
Speaking to reporters during his visit to Hyderabad, Yadav claimed that more than three crore voters in Uttar Pradesh are at risk of being struck off the rolls. He said the Election Commission should be working to increase voter participation rather than overseeing what he described as “large-scale deletions that threaten the very foundation of democracy.”
“If votes are removed in areas where the BJP has lost, it is nothing less than a conspiracy against democracy,” Yadav said. “This is not the purpose of SIR. This is NRC brought in quietly. They could not implement NRC openly, so they have introduced it under another name.”
Drawing parallels with the National Register of Citizens, Yadav argued that the documentation being sought during the SIR mirrors the same requirements associated with NRC. “If NRC were to be implemented, what documents would people need to show? The same documents are being demanded now,” he alleged.
Yadav also compared the SIR exercise to past policy decisions that, according to him, caused widespread hardship. “People are being troubled again, just like during demonetisation, the COVID period, and the rollout of GST,” he said.
During his Hyderabad visit, the former Uttar Pradesh chief minister attended the Vision India – AI Summit, underscoring the growing influence of artificial intelligence across sectors such as agriculture and healthcare. He said the initiative was aimed at shaping a roadmap for “Neo-India” driven by foresight rather than polarisation. “Politics should be about vision, not division,” he remarked.
On the ongoing Parliament Winter Session, Yadav took a sharp dig at the ruling dispensation, saying the most striking feature was that “some people who never sang Vande Mataram are suddenly eager to do so.”
Yadav also held meetings with Telangana Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy and senior leaders of the Bharat Rashtra Samithi, including working president K T Rama Rao. According to an official release, Reddy briefed him on the state government’s development and welfare initiatives.
The Samajwadi Party chief praised the Telangana government’s decision to recognise ‘Sadar’, a festival celebrated by the Yadav community in Hyderabad, as a state festival, calling it a gesture of social inclusion and cultural respect
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