US cites India on voter IDs, but are elections under Modi clean?

US President Donald Trump has been touting India’s election system as a model for tougher voter-identification rules in the United States that he is trying to force through in the face of political opposition.

In a Truth Social post on Monday, the US president said India’s Chief Election Commissioner had asked his administration how the US could hold elections without a valid photo ID.

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“India’s last election had 646,000,000 voters! Less than 1 percent voted by mail, and every single voter had to have a valid photo identity document,” he said.

The US president used the comparison to renew his push for Congress to pass the SAVE America Act, legislation that would require people registering to vote in federal elections to provide documentary proof of US citizenship and impose stricter voter-ID requirements.

While India’s elections are the world’s largest and are widely admired for their scale, complexity and efficiency, its election process has also faced scrutiny over electoral rolls, campaign malpractices, and increasingly, concerns over the independence of institutions under Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

So, how clean are India’s elections, what does the country’s experience really tell us, and do voter IDs end electoral malpractices?

What is the Save America Act, and why is it controversial?

The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility, or SAVE America Act, is a voting bill backed by Trump.

The version passed by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives in February would require people registering to vote in federal elections to provide documentary proof of US citizenship, such as a birth certificate or passport.

It would also impose stricter identification requirements for people casting ballots, whether in person or by mail. Supporters argue that strong documentation requirements would help safeguard the election.

However, non-citizens voting in US federal and state elections is already illegal, while Trump’s claims that widespread voter fraud exists have not been supported by any meaningful evidence.

Research conducted by New York-based Brennan Center for Justice found that most reported incidents of voter fraud were largely a result of clerical errors or bad data-matching practices.

The report reviewed elections that had been “meticulously” studied for voter fraud and found incident rates between 0.0003 percent and 0.0025 percent.

Critics have said the bill would be tantamount to widespread voter disenfranchisement and would negatively affect voter turnout.

Meanwhile, Democratic politicians say the Trump administration is using the bill to influence the outcome of the upcoming midterm elections, where Republicans are expected to defend their razor-thin majority in the House of Representatives.

How do India’s elections and voter IDs work?

The Election Commission of India (ECI) is the constitutional authority that oversees elections across the country. During the 2024 general election, nearly 970 million people were registered to vote. More than 640 million of them actually voted in what was the largest election in history.

Being the most populated country in the world, India holds elections over several weeks. The last general election was conducted in seven phases, with voters electing members of the Lok Sabha, India’s lower house of parliament.

Voter photo identification was introduced by the ECI in 1993 to “prevent impersonation” and as part of its effort to strengthen election administration.

India also maintains detailed electoral rolls, which determine who is eligible to vote in a particular constituency.

Prior to voting day, the ECI asks voters to check that their names appear on the electoral roll.

Does India have any mail-in voting?

Yes, India does have postal ballots, but only certain voters can access them.

According to the election commission website, voters can submit their vote on an “electronically received postal ballot from their preferred location” outside of their assigned voting constituency, and “send back the marked postal ballot through the post”.

Those eligible to vote include service sector workers such as members of the police and armed forces, individuals on election duty, as well as those under trial but yet to be convicted – all individuals who cannot be in their constituency to vote on election day because of circumstances beyond their control.

Have voter IDs eliminated fraud in Indian elections?

India’s opposition has consistently raised concerns over alleged election malpractices in both general and regional elections.

In August 2025, Congress Party’s Rahul Gandhi alleged fraud in the 2024 general election, accusing the ECI of adding fraudulent voters to electoral rolls in Karnataka’s Mahadevapura constituency.

In news conferences held in large halls, Gandhi showed multiple instances where the same voter appeared to have several voter IDs – in theory potentially allowing one person to cast more than one vote.

Gandhi said the claims were based on six months of research and challenged the commission to release electronic voter rolls and CCTV footage to disprove them.

The government rejected the allegations, but did not accept Gandhi’s challenge to release details that would prove or disprove his accusations.

Later that year in November, the Congress Party alleged that more than 2.5 million votes had been “stolen” during the 2024 Haryana state election. According to India’s biggest opposition party, irregularities were found in voter records, including identical photographs appearing on multiple voter IDs.

Have Modi’s policies cleaned up elections – or cleaned out opposition voters?

While evidence of widespread voter fraud remains scant, analysts and rights groups argue the focus on voter ID in India misses a more fundamental problem: who gets to vote and who doesn’t.

In October, the ECI launched the controversial Special Intensive Revision (SIR), backed by the Modi government but opposed by nearly all opposition parties. The nationwide exercise aims to identify deceased, duplicate and otherwise ineligible voters on the electoral rolls.

In Bihar last year, nearly 80 million registered voters were given only weeks to verify their eligibility, with many asked to provide documents such as birth certificates, passports or school records.

In September, the ECI released a list of 74.2 million voters after removing the names of 4.7 million people.

“The present government and the ECI are choosing who among the population should remain as voters,” political economist and author Parakala Prabhakar told Al Jazeera. “This amounts to government choosing the voters rather than the voters choosing the government.”

In April 2026, about nine million people in West Bengal – nearly 12 percent of the state’s 76 million registered voters – lost their voting rights following the completion of the SIR process in the state.

Of those, nearly six million were classified as absent or deceased. Another three million were unable to vote because there was insufficient time for special tribunals to hear their cases before the election.

Rights activists and election observers claim the exercise disproportionately disenfranchises marginalised groups.

Of the deleted names, 34 percent of the voters were Muslim, despite being only 27 percent of the state’s total population, according to media outlet The Hindu. While 63 percent of deletions comprised Hindu voters, many of them included members of the Matua community, a sect of the marginalised Dalit group, who live largely in areas bordering Bangladesh.

“In India, the ongoing effort through SIR is to exclude sections that are inimical to the Hindu Majoritarian agenda,” economist Prabhakar said.

“At the end of this exercise, India will have two classes of Indians: one with franchise, the other without franchise,” he added.

“While some other polities chose to physically cleanse their political systems by shedding blood, India under Modi is experimenting with a bloodless way, by depriving the ‘other’ of their franchise.”

Reporting originally appeared via Al Jazeera. Read the full source for additional context.