Bengaluru: The protesters detained Monday while attempting to march to the Chief Electoral Officer’s (CEO) office to submit a memorandum opposing the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Karnataka have submitted the memorandum by email and vowed to continue their agitation.The memorandum, prepared by My Vote, My Right — a coalition of over 40 civil society organisations, including trade unions, women’s groups and human rights organisations, along with other democratic rights groups and citizens — demands the cancellation of the SIR process in Karnataka, restoration of electoral rolls as they stood in Jan 2025, and the resignation of chief election commissioner Gyanesh Kumar.“There’s no question of backing out. The issue is serious. While we’ve already written to the Karnataka home minister about the way police acted on Monday, there’s another question that remains unanswered,” said Clifton Rozario, national general secretary of All India Lawyers Association for Justice, who was allegedly assaulted during the protest. “I’ve been at many protests over the years, and Monday’s police behaviour was unfamiliar, to say the least. So, the question we have is: has the election commission communicated something to the police that has not been made public?” Rozario asked.A key concern raised in the memorandum is the deletion of eligible voters’ names from electoral rolls. Claiming that more than one crore names have been deleted from Karnataka’s rolls, the signatories said street vendors, migrant workers, single women, members of the LGBTQIA+ community, Dalits and religious minorities were among the worst affected.
Bengalureans continued to gather at Freedom Park Tuesday to oppose SIR and condemn the detention of activists in the country
The memorandum also highlights the low rate of reinstatement of deleted names through Form 6, the application used to seek inclusion in electoral rolls. According to the signatories, eligible voters are facing difficulties in getting their names restored even through this mechanism, raising concerns about their ability to exercise their right to vote.The memorandum warns that marginalised communities face a disproportionate risk of exclusion because of difficulties in producing documents, migration, discrepancies in name, and arbitrary objections. “Excluding these groups would deepen existing inequalities in democratic representation,” said Vinay Sreenivasa of My Vote, My Right.The signatories also expressed concern over the alleged misuse of Form 7, which allows objections to be filed against the inclusion of names in electoral rolls. They claimed that the process had created opportunities for politically motivated deletions, particularly targeting Muslims and Dalits.According to the memorandum, concerns over large-scale deletions, procedural irregularities, lack of transparency and inadequate accountability have eroded public confidence in the SIR process. It calls for safeguards against arbitrary deletions and the misuse of the objection mechanism in future electoral roll revisions. “Along with scrapping the ongoing SIR and restoring the Jan 2025 rolls, we’ve urged that future revisions be conducted through a transparent, lawful and publicly accountable process, ensuring that no eligible voter is deprived of the right to vote,” Sreenivasa said.
