About Election Watch

Election Watch: Uttar Pradesh, 2027 is a monthly bulletin from the South Asia Justice Campaign (SAJC). It documents human rights violations against Muslims in Uttar Pradesh, and threats to the integrity of the electoral process, ahead of the state’s Legislative Assembly election, expected in February 2027. A new edition will follow each month until the election.

Uttar Pradesh is India’s most populous state and home to more than a fifth of the country’s Muslims. In March 2026, the Panel of Independent International Experts (PIIE), a group of three prominent jurists, found credible evidence of ‘widespread and systematic human rights violations’ against Muslims in the state, some of which may amount to crimes against humanity. Anti-Muslim hate speech and violence in the state have escalated around elections before.

It is an established pattern now that elections in Uttar Pradesh in recent years – parliamentary, state, or local – become moments of heightened anti-minority rhetoric and violence. This documentation effort seeks to record the facts, as electioneering kicks off in Uttar Pradesh, also to act as evidentiary basis for early warning, in the hopes of interventions for prevention. It will record, month by month, instances of violations of human rights of minorities in Uttar Pradesh, alongside the violations of electoral integrity, another trend taking roots. The incidents documented in each edition are not exhaustive. They record only what was reported and could be verified.

What we monitor: Each edition covers killings, arrests and detentions, torture and ill-treatment, hate speech, religious freedom, and discrimination in economic, social and cultural life, by both state and non-state actors. It also tracks electoral integrity against UN guidance on genuine elections: who is able to vote, how opposition parties and critics are treated, and whether election authorities act independently.

How: The bulletin follows the method and the international human rights law framing of SAJC’s India Persecution Tracker. It draws on national and regional media reports in English, Hindi and Urdu.

Editions