Bengaluru: YouTuber Dhruv Rathee made a big splash at his first-ever protest in Bengaluru on Thursday, seeking answers from Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government over allegations of mass deletions from voter list in the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) and demanding the dismissal of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar.
Clarifying that he was not, as alleged, seeking a regime change but only answers from the government over SIR. He took part in the anti-SIR protests in Bengaluru’s Freedom Park along with actor-activist Prakash Raj, Justice (Retd) Gopal Gowda, Cockroach Janta Party founder Abhijit Dipke, thinker Devanoor Mahadeva and several others, including two Congress legislators—Naseer Ahmed and B.R.Patil.
“I have just three questions,” Rathee said to rapturous applause from the protestors. He claimed that in West Bengal, 70,000 voters were removed before polls and added back afterwards, in Bihar 65 lakh were deleted, while 14 lakh voters were added in poll-bound Uttar Pradesh, he claimed.
He said that the mass disenfranchisement of millions of Indian voters affects all sections of society, irrespective of political leanings.
“The people who have shown up here—there is no bigger patriot than you and those who are supporting the traitor Gyanesh Kumar, there is no bigger traitor than them,” Rathee said.
Rathee’s post from the protest with the caption ‘Hello @narendramodi, India has a message for you’ with an embedded video while chanting ‘Vote Chor, Gaddi Chor’ has been viewed over 4.8 million times on X.
Hello @narendramodi
India has a message for you. pic.twitter.com/wqIGNlkWsh
— Dhruv Rathee (@dhruv_rathee) October 8, 2026
Speakers took turns to bash the Union government, repeatedly reminding the Modi administration that these protests “were just the beginning”, and threatened escalation if their demands were not met. “The first wicket was Dharmendra Pradhan. The second will be Gyanesh Kumar,” Dipke said.
The CJP has called for protests on 10 October at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar on the same lines as the anti-NEET protests which culminated in the resignation of then Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan.
‘Aukaat’
Karnataka became the ground zero of the Congress’s ‘vote chori’ campaign after Rahul Gandhi alleged electoral-roll manipulation in Bengaluru’s Mahadevapura constituency in 2025. DK Shivakumar-led government later accused the BJP, the state’s principal opposition, of submitting hundreds of thousands of form 7s for deletion of voters who were not its support base.
Since the commencement of SIR in Karnataka, there have been over 1 crore deletions across the state.
The Congress party and its government in Karnataka have accused PM Modi and CEC Gyanesh Kumar of ordering mass deletions of voters who belong to oppressed communities, minorities and are not supporters of the BJP.
CJP leaders and other speakers at the anti-SIR protests said they were agitating as ‘citizens’ and not in partnership with any political party.
The stage at the protest had two levels. Activists, including senior Kannada actor Mukhya Mantri Chandru and others, sat on the lower level while Dipke, Raj, Rathee and others were seated on a higher level right next to them.
The crowd—mostly youngsters—pushed forward toward the barricades that put about 30-feet of separation between the audience and the stage. The crowd cheered every time Rathee, Dipke or Saurav Das waved at them or even looked in their direction.
However, heavy police presence stood between the eager crowd and the stage to avoid any untoward incident in the Congress-ruled Karnataka. Dipke said that Modi became the prime minister by deleting votes.
“Modi is the murderer of Democracy. They just need ownership over you which is an RSS mentality,” Dipke said.
He then said that Mahatma Gandhi was the soul of India, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar was the nation’s backbone and Jawaharlal Nehru, the country’s mind.
“Modi wants to become bigger than Nehru but he does not have the status,” Dipke said, using the Hindi word “aukaat”.
‘One Nation, One Election’ is just a slogan, and the real intention is ‘One Nation, One Party, the same intention by Adolf Hitler once held, Dipke said.
“So I want to tell Narendra Modi to go and ask what happened to Adolf Hitler. He had to shoot himself. So you will never be able to turn India into a dictatorship,” Dipke said.
(Edited by Ajeet Tiwari)