The Delhi state committee of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has escalated a barrage of Islamophobic memes, videos, and graphics across its social media platforms, using the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls to depict Muslims as “infiltrators” and enemies of the nation.
The content, ranging from caricatures of Muslims in skull caps and burqas to animal imagery equating them with rats, pigs, and mosquitoes, has drawn strong criticism from civil society, opposition leaders, and media watchdogs.
The SIR, an Election Commission (EC) exercise to update voter lists, has been aggressively marketed by BJP leaders as a major crackdown on alleged undocumented immigrants.
However, the EC has not yet released consolidated data on the number of foreign nationals removed during the drive in Bihar, the state where the SIR was framed as a campaign against “illegal voters.”
An independent analysis by The Wire, based on available official documents, suggests that foreign nationals constituted barely 0.012% of Bihar’s voter base, raising questions about the scale, framing, and political utility of the BJP’s narrative.
Despite this negligible proportion, the Delhi BJP continued to portray the SIR as a nationwide purge of “infiltrators,” with Muslims depicted as the primary target.
A series of posts showed Rohingya- or Bangladeshi-coded characters to symbolise Muslims broadly, collapsing the distinction between undocumented immigrants and Indian Muslim citizens.
The controversy escalated on 1 December, when the Delhi BJP’s X (formerly Twitter) handle released a movie-poster-style graphic depicting opposition leaders Rahul Gandhi, Arvind Kejriwal, Akhilesh Yadav, and Mamata Banerjee styled in Muslim attire.
SIR से सबसे ज़्यादा तकलीफ़, घुसपैठियों के इन हमदर्दों को है
— BJP Delhi (@BJP4Delhi) December 1, 2025pic.twitter.com/GegzMMGwJJ
The visual implied that any critique of the SIR amounted to siding with infiltrators, reinforcing a narrative that equates Muslim identity with illegitimacy.
Other posts on social media employed increasingly dehumanising metaphors, such as a graphic showing Prime Minister Narendra Modi sealing holes to block rats peering through the cracks. Another reel shows pig-like creatures fleeing a harvesting machine labelled as the SIR. A video shows a Muslim family fleeing their home as the smoke of a mosquito coil symbolises the SIR, explicitly linking Muslims to pest-like infestations.
There were also videos where employers warned Muslim workers that infiltrators disguised as labourers were stealing jobs.
The campaign also dovetailed with similar messaging emerging from other BJP units.
In Assam, Minister Ashok Singhal circulated imagery referencing cauliflower fields, widely interpreted as an allusion to the mass burial of Muslim victims during the 1989 Bhagalpur Muslim massacre.
The official Assam BJP account has also routinely shared Islamophobic material, pointing to a broader coordinated trend across the party’s digital network.
Political analysts note that the BJP has long weaponised the term “infiltrator” to target undocumented immigrants from Bangladesh and Myanmar. Yet during election cycles, the rhetoric frequently bleeds into messaging that implicates India’s own Muslim population.
The latest wave of posts reflects this pattern, arriving as top BJP leaders, including Prime Minister Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah, invoke the SIR to spotlight alleged foreign voter infiltration in Bihar.
Human rights groups say the portrayal of Muslims as pests and invaders carries dangerous implications in a polarised political climate.
With no substantive data yet published by the EC, critics argue that the BJP’s messaging amounts to a deliberate communal campaign one that exploits a routine administrative exercise to stoke fear, scapegoat minorities, and delegitimise political opposition.
The post Delhi BJP runs Islamophobic campaign around SIR, dehumanising Muslims as pests, invaders appeared first on Maktoob media.
