Bengaluru: The Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in Karnataka has disenfranchised one in five voters, as nearly 20 percent or around 1 crore voters were excluded from the final rolls released Tuesday.
Karnataka Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) V Anbukkumar Tuesday said that the total number of eligible electors stood at over 4.54 crore voters after SIR. Prior to SIR, the number of registered voters was 5,54,32,314, which means 99,32,303 electors have been struck off.
“As of today, Karnataka has 4,55,00,011 voters, including 2,25,83,107 males, 2,29,14,063 females, and 2841 others,” Anbukkumar told reporters in Bengaluru Tuesday.
He added that for every 1,000 male voters in Karnataka, there are 1,017 female voters.
The final roll has released at a time when several political parties, including Karnataka’s ruling Congress, have raised serious objections to the SIR exercise and alleged mass targeted deletions.
Karnataka Chief Minister D.K. Shivakumar Tuesday claimed that opposition parties (referring to BJP) carried out several illegal activities, including allegations of mass printing and submission of Form 7s—used to request deletion of a voter’s name from electoral rolls—to delete voters’ names, particularly of Muslims in the state.
“It is the duty of the Karnataka government and the party to protect every voter in this state and the country,” he said.
The Karnataka CEO denied any illegalities in conducting the exercise, including the deletion of over 60,000 names by officials.
On allegations that EC officials were taking voters off the list, Anbukkumar said that in Form 7 cases where notices were issued and individuals were found ineligible, the form is generated in the name of the official and rejected, which he said was official procedure.
SIR protests
According to SIR data, of the over 5.54 crore electors recorded in mid-June, only around 4.46 crore individuals or 80.52 percent of the baseline, submitted signed enumeration forms to Booth Level Officers.
The remaining 1,07,96,339 unreturned forms were categorised under the Absentee, Shifted, Dead and Duplicate framework, which identified 65.45 lakh permanently shifted voters, 19 lakh absentees, 16.39 lakh deceased individuals, and 7.09 lakh duplicate enrollments.
The CEO said several applications were still pending and people could still apply to become part of the roll upon verification.
The SIR exercise has been mired in controversy ever since the West Bengal elections, which snowballed into nation-wide protests over recent weeks.
Countrywide protests, including the ones led by Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), Rahul Gandhi-led Congress and several other members of the INDIA bloc, have intensified in recent weeks with various political and civil society groups demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar.
The Congress has also called for a mega rally in Delhi’s Ramlila Maidan on 1 November.
“Our votes are being stolen, and we will not tolerate this quietly under any circumstances. Names have been removed from the voter lists. Rules and laws have been broken. And lathis have been used on those asking questions. Now the country will respond,” Rahul Gandhi said in an X post Sunday.
(Edited by Gitanjali Das)
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