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Journalism of Courage
Actor Prakash Raj-led group meets Karnataka CM, flags ‘outrages’ in SIR
A civil society coalition has urged the Karnataka government not to use the SIR voter list for any elections until all eligible voters are included in the final draft.
A delegation of activists led by actor Prakash Raj handed over the report against the SIR to Chief Minister D K Shivakumar late on Wednesday evening. (File Photos)
A report by a civil society coalition in Karnataka has highlighted multiple violations during the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in the state and has urged the government not to use the SIR list for any elections until all eligible voters are included in the voter list.
A delegation of activists led by actor Prakash Raj handed over the report by the Anti-SIR Alliance and Citizens’ Vote Protection Committee to Chief Minister D K Shivakumar late on Wednesday evening.
The report urged the state government to convene a special session to discuss the “outrages SIR has committed in Karnataka”. It also said that a condemnation resolution must be passed against “the traitor” Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar.
The development comes at a time when Kumar has been in the eye of a storm over alleged irregularities in the conduct of the SIR and the deletion of over 13 crore voters from the draft electoral rolls during the exercise. The Opposition INDIA bloc on Wednesday announced a joint action plan against the alleged irregularities.
Top 10 SIR ‘crimes’ listed
The activists asked the state government to reject the “wicked and defective” SIR process and the final rolls. “A campaign must be taken up through the state government to conduct social auditing in a scientific and people-friendly method, detecting all voters who have been wrongly deleted, and bringing them onto the voters’ list,” the report said.
Listing out the ‘Top Ten SIR Crimes’, the report said that the entire SIR process has been illegally imposed on the country. “Apart from that, deleting under the names of Absent, Shifted, (and) Others, without even the opportunity of appeal is wholesale immorality,” it said, adding that refusing enumeration forms and Form 8—form used by registered voters to shift their residence, correct details in the existing electoral roll, etc.—of those who had shifted was a crime.
Highlighting the investigation carried out by the civil society groups, the report claimed that ‘Absent, Shifted, Duplicate, Dead and Others’ (ASDDO) category was full of errors. There are many cases of people who were wrongly deleted by putting them in the ASDDO list, it said, adding that there were similar cases of people who were alive but were placed in the ‘Dead’ category.
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“That the highest deletion and the highest number of notices have been received by nomadic, Adivasi, minority, Dalit, most backward communities, and among them women, has been proved beyond any doubt by the figures published by the Election Commission itself,” the report said.
The Karnataka SIR exercise began on June 30, 24 years after the last SIR was held in 2002. The draft electoral roll has been published.
© The Indian Express Pvt Ltd
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