Wary of voter deletions during SIR, Karnataka mulls petition in Supreme Court
The Congress party will also hold a meeting on May 24 with all MLAs, MLCs, and candidates who were defeated in the 2023 Karnataka Assembly polls to discuss the SIR exercise scheduled for the state.
According to the SIR timeline released last week, the draft electoral roll will be published by the ECI on August 5, and the final roll will be out by October 7. (Express File Photo) Amid concerns over the likely deletion of a large number of voters during the upcoming Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise to be carried out by the Election Commission of India (ECI), the Karnataka Cabinet Thursday held preliminary discussions on approaching the Supreme Court on the issue.
According to Law and Parliamentary Affairs Minister H K Patil, the petition will likely challenge the ECI’s legal immunity, apart from a prayer for directions to ensure that the final electoral roll is submitted to the Supreme Court.
“SIR has caused problems across the country. In West Bengal, 27 lakh voters lost their voting rights. Serious objections have been raised in states like Tamil Nadu… Any citizen of the state, country should not lose his right to vote for any reason, unnecessarily or deliberately,” Patil said.
Responding to a query, the minister said the objective of the proposal to approach the Supreme Court was to ensure the ECI’s transparency. “This is a question of the rights of citizens of the country. If ECI commits a mistake, they have complete immunity right now,” he said, adding that the state was still discussing how the issue could be sorted.
A final decision on approaching the top court was likely to be made by early next week.
Sources told The Indian Express that the petition to submit the final electoral rolls to the Supreme Court was a measure proposed to ensure that political parties had access to the rolls, as they had been denied access in other states. “Moreover, there are also fears that a large number of votes could be deleted in Karnataka,” the source said.
While voter mapping was conducted in districts with high migration rates, such as Raichur, estimates indicate that about 66 per cent of voters will be deleted. “Similarly, a higher rate of deletion is expected in Bengaluru, which is estimated at 46 per cent,” the source said, adding that districts with low migration rates would see a relatively lower number of voters being deleted.
The Congress party will also hold a meeting on May 24 with all MLAs, MLCs, and defeated candidates from the 2023 Karnataka Assembly polls to discuss the SIR exercise scheduled for the state. The outcome of the meeting is significant, given the state’s plan to pursue any SIR lapses legally, the source said.
According to the SIR timeline released last week, the draft electoral roll will be published by the ECI on August 5, and the final roll will be out by October 7.
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