Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge on Friday alleged that the Bharatiya Janata Party is “now ready to stoop to any level of immorality to stay in power”.

He referred to the revision of voter rolls in Bihar, claiming that the exercise was used to “openly remove” Opposition voters, and claimed that living persons were being declared dead during the process.

He further said that the impartiality of the Election Commission could be gauged by its unwillingness to disclose who had been removed from the voter lists and on what basis.

However, Kharge added that he was grateful to the Supreme Court, which on Thursday directed the poll body to publish a district-wise list of around 65 lakh voters whose names were deleted from Bihar’s draft electoral rolls.

Earlier in the day, the Congress chief hoisted the national flag at the Congress’ new headquarters in New Delhi, and spoke about the party’s campaign against alleged electoral malpractices, calling it a struggle to “save democracy”, The Hindu reported.

“This is not a fight to win elections but to save India’s democracy and protect the Constitution,” Kharge said to his party colleagues on Friday. “We must fight this battle with the same intensity as the way we fought for freedom,” he said, urging Congress workers to take an active role in verifying the voter rolls at the booth level.

India not truly free under BJP: Mamata Banerjee

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday said that India is not genuinely free under the current BJP-led Union Government, PTI reported.

Banerjee claimed that the BJP is curbing citizens’ fundamental rights, including voting rights and freedom of speech, the news agency reported.

“Despite India having achieved Independence 78 years ago, the people are not truly independent under the rule of the fascist BJP,” she said.

In a post on X Banerjee said that “Bengal and Bengalis are the victims of hatred in different parts of the country.”.

She added that the people of Bengal, who had already suffered during the partition, were once again facing attacks on various pretexts, and efforts were being made to strip them of their constitutional rights under the guise of amending the voter list.

The Trinamool Congress has repeatedly raised concerns about several Bengali-speaking migrant workers being detained in parts of the country on the suspicion of being Bangladeshis.

Since the April 22 Pahalgam terror attack, the police in several states ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party have been detaining Bengali-speaking persons – mostly Muslims – and asking them to prove that they are Indian citizens.

Several persons have been forced into Bangladesh after they allegedly could not prove their Indian citizenship. In some cases, persons who were mistakenly sent to Bangladesh returned to the country after state authorities in India proved that they were Indians.