Bengaluru: The Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls has triggered deep anxiety within governing Congress, which is treating the drive as a high-stakes battle to preserve its foundational electoral math rather than a simple bureaucratic exercise.The political panic stems directly from the state’s delicate demographic balance. At the heart of the friction is the survival of Ahinda, a social coalition of the powerful alliance of minorities, backward classes, and Dalits engineered by former chief minister Siddaramaiah.State data shows Ahinda communities collectively represent an estimated 65% to 70% of Karnataka’s population. Within this matrix, Muslims (12%), Scheduled Castes (17%), and Scheduled Tribes (7%) alone form a massive 36% voting block that Congress relies on heavily to win tight races.Congress functionaries openly worry that a rigorous physical verification process will disproportionately impact these very groups, altering the arithmetic in dozens of closely contested seats where victory margins are thin.The state cabinet recently passed a formal resolution targeting the execution of the month-long drive, which comes after a 24-year hiatus.“We raised 12 objections to the way SIR is conducted. The CEC and Election Commission are acting as puppets in the hands of the central govt,” home minister Priyank Kharge alleged, citing concerns over opacity and the potential risk of mass disenfranchisement of poor, elderly, and migrant voters who frequently shift residences.Chief minister DK Shivakumar has taken a highly proactive stance, urging party workers to guard the rolls. “The right to vote is the right to live. Our govt will actively facilitate alternative identity and residence certificates so no genuine voter is left out,” Shivakumar said, while explicitly warning citizens that dropping off the voter list could eventually complicate their access to the state’s flagship welfare guarantee schemes.BK Hariprasad, state Congress president, has deployed specialised party observers across all districts and taluks under the campaign ‘Congress Nadey Nimma Mata Rakshane Kade’ (Congress marches towards protecting your vote). He has tasked booth level agents with ensuring vulnerable citizens fill out forms correctly to secure their voting rights.However, opposition BJP has dismissed these allegations, accusing the governing party of fear-mongering to protect fraudulent entries, especially among migrants from different states.“The Election Commission is an independent institution,” countered Prabhu Chauhan, BJP MLA. “This process is a necessary purification of the voter list to identify migrations and eliminate bogus names, which is exactly why Congress is jittery.”MN Patil, political analyst said there is very little room for error. “In scores of assembly seats, margins boil down to just a few thousand votes. Even a 1% to 2% artificial reduction in traditional support bases can flip a constituency’s result,” he said.
