Just days before elections in Kerala on April 6, Opposition leader Ramesh Chennithala released a list of over 4 lakh ‘bogus’ voters, alleging massive discrepancies in the voters’ list. The Election Commission told the high court that it identified only a little over 38,000 such voters.
Amid this, a viral post on social media claims Kerala has 20 lakh illegal Bangladeshi voters. The claim has been shared with an article titled, “Massive electoral fraud detected in Kerala : 20 lakh Bangladeshi immigrants are voters”. The article has been published by a website named “Social Observer”.
The scrutiny reveals that the fraudsters have adopted the same modus operandi to add fake voters. A 61-year-old voter in Uduma constituency in Kasaragod district, has five voters’ identity cards which have been issued in her name without her knowledge. She said, she has only one identity card. Chennithala has produced the serial numbers of the cards issued in her name. Anti Fake News War Room (AFWA) has found no substantial proof in support of the claim. There is no report by established media houses or academic journals which says Kerala has 20 lakh Bangladeshi voters. The Centre had also made it clear in Lok Sabha that it has no accurate data on the number of illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. Stanly Sebastian, an educational entrepreneur, the article says there are 20 lakh Bangladeshis and Rohingya Muslims in Kerala who have ration cards and voter ID cards, and it is these voters who’ll decide which government will rule the state.
However, apart from Sebastian’s quote, the article does not mention any source for this data. Sebastian is a Kerala native currently residing in Bangalore.
Sebastian said from an independent investigation he had conducted, it was revealed that over 20 lakh Bangladeshis with government ID cards reside in Kerala. He asserted that he did not claim all these 20 lakh Bangladeshis would be part of Kerala’s electoral rolls.
“I did not say there are 20 lakh Bangladeshi nationals in Kerala’s electoral rolls. But there must be 20 lakh Bangladeshis with various government ID proofs in the state and many of them must have an election ID,” Sebastian said. However, when AFWA asked for documents to substantiate his claim, he could not provide any.
A total of 2.74 crore voters figure in Kerala’s final electoral roll published by EC. The figure includes 1.37 crore female voters, 1.29 crore male voters and 7.4 lakh first-time voters.
According to the United Nations’ International Migrant Stock 2019 report, the number of Bangladeshi immigrants in India is a little more than 30 lakh. Irudaya Rajan, an expert in Kerala’s migration patterns. Rajan is Chair Professor at Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs (MOIA) Research Unit on International Migration at the Centre for Development Studies.
“No exact data is available on how many Bangladeshis reside in India, let alone Kerala. If Bangladeshis come and work in Kerala, they claim to be from West Bengal, and nobody then crosschecks their nationality. We are not denying the presence of undocumented Bangladeshis in India, but their number is meagre,” Rajan said.
Considering all the evidence, it can be clearly said that the claim of Kerala having 20 lakh Bangladeshi voters is misleading.
