A couple of hours at a help desk set up by activists in Bengaluru revealed the extent of possible reasons that an Indian citizen might lose their right to vote due to the Special Intensive Revision (SIR).
During the time TNM spent in Subashnagar, located on the fringes of Electronics City, Bengaluru’s IT corridor in the southeastern part of the city, it was unclear how the ECI would adjudicate the situations that people found themselves in. Subashnagar is in Bengaluru South assembly constituency.
Among the dozens of people who turned up at the help desk on April 5 was Kalavathi, a 46-year-old resident of Subhashnagar and a domestic worker. She was born and raised in the Kolar Gold Fields (KGF) in Kolar district and moved to Bengaluru 28 years ago after getting married. She has maintained all the documents required for her two sons, but has none to prove her own identity.
“Both my parents are dead. They say you can map your name to your grandparents, but who’s seen them?” Kalavathi said. She voted for the first time in 2023.
An elderly man who turned up at the help desk was in a bizarre predicament. He asked a BLO present there whether or not he could map his voter ID to that of his uncle since his parents were both deceased. When the BLO replied that he couldn’t, the man burst out in frustration. “But why can’t I do that? Both my parents are no more. The rest of my family have their voter IDs in Channapatna,” he said, waving his phone and showing the BLO a list of names from voter rolls on his phone.
Later, he told TNM, his frustration evident, “This is all I’ve been doing for the past month. Now they’re saying come back in two days. It is driving people mad.”
The help desk captures but a fraction of the chaos triggered by the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) across the country. The SIR has not yet been announced by the Election Commission of India for Karnataka.
However, booth-level officers (BLOs) have been carrying out ‘mapping’, a pre-SIR activity. They have been going door-to-door since October 2025, matching current voters to their parents’ names in the 2002 electoral rolls. However, activists allege that BLOs have not been given any official instructions to carry out the mapping.
Civil society groups have launched interventions such as awareness campaigns and help desks across the state with the hope of minimising disenfranchisement that has occurred in states such as Bihar and West Bengal.
Jebran Khan, a software consultant who is the Haveri unit president of the Solidarity Youth Movement (SYM), told TNM that mapping in Haveri started in October last year. “No one knew that it was happening. Back then, SIR was only happening in 12 states (nine states and three Union Territories).”
On October 27, 2025, the ECI issued an order stating that SIR would be done in nine states and three Union Territories.
After receiving training from a lawyer who was familiar with the West Bengal and Bihar SIRs, Jebran started a WhatsApp group to help people figure out what they’re supposed to do. ‘Mapping’ is completed for a voter if they can establish that their parents were on the electoral rolls in 2002.
Complaints about mapping
The ECI website has a section in which people can look up their names in the 2002 electoral rolls. Navigating it is not only tedious, but it also requires an understanding of ECI bureaucratese, which even people generally familiar with administrative processes would need time to figure out.
A person needs to provide the BLO with the name, Assembly Constituency number, part number (booth number) and serial number of their parents' voter IDs. This is what Jebran does for people who reach out to him for help on WhatsApp.
“BLOs did not go everywhere. We have to give the numbers to the BLOs; they don’t find them themselves. All they have are the hard copies of the 2002 rolls,” Jebran said.
This means that if someone has moved into an area after 2002, the BLO is usually unable or unwilling to help the person find these three details. Unable because they too many not be able to trace a voter ID card number that belonged to a constituency whose boundaries and voting booths have now been redrawn. Unwilling because of the sheer time it takes to go through thousands of names to find the one you’re looking for.
A similar scene played out at the help desk in Bengaluru, with volunteers helping Subhash Nagar residents find their parents’ names on the 2002 rolls. Activists have noted the EPIC number of people who couldn’t find their parents’ names in the 2002 rolls and plan to submit the details to the CEO of Karnataka.
Jebran said the SYM had directly helped around six lakh people in Haveri district, besides conducting awareness workshops on what to do if someone’s name is not on the draft rolls.
Official apathy
The My Vote My Right campaign, comprising activists from across the state, has submitted several complaints to the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) of Karnataka, V Anbukumar, demanding transparency regarding the mapping protocol and coverage.
In a representation to the CEO, the campaign pointed out that the lack of transparency was contrary to the ECI’s own manuals.
The Manual of Electoral Rolls 2023 says, “For the purpose of achieving good quality electoral rolls, the pre-revision activities are nowadays given the same weightage as revision activities.”
The campaign also pointed out to the CEO that a large number of women, tribal people, migrant workers, and other marginalised communities could not be mapped for various reasons.
This included places in Kodagu district, such as Virajpet, where not a single tribal person could be mapped because of a lack of documentation, the campaign said, citing a report in The Hindu.
Many married women could not be mapped because they were unable to find their parents on the 2002 rolls, and they could not be mapped to husbands or other relatives in their marital families according to the rules, the petition said.
However, many people above the age of 39 were also not mapped to their parents or grandparents on the 2002 rolls. The campaign demanded that this rule be revoked.
TNM contacted CEO V Anbukumar, but he could not be reached.
What does the SIR entail?
Many people at the Bengaluru help desk were at a loss to understand why they were being asked to prove their identities and find their parents when they had been voting in the same place for years.
The ECI has maintained that the SIR is routine and that it is being done to “purify” the electoral rolls.
However, many activists and experts have alleged that the SIR is illegal, as the two main laws that govern electoral rolls, the Representation of People’s Act 1950 (RPA) and the Registration of Electors Rules 1960 (RER), do not mention a ‘special intensive revision’.
The RPA provides for intensive revision and summary revision, and party-intensive, partly-summary revision, which can be carried out for any constituency, either in part or whole, by issuing prior notification and mentioning the reasons for doing so in writing.
The ECI admitted in the Supreme Court that the reason why the latest voter rolls are being mapped to voter rolls of 2002-2004 is that the 2003 amendment made to the Citizenship Act introduced the concept of ‘illegal immigrant’.
Until the 2003 amendment, any child born in India before June 1, 1987, would generally be granted Indian citizenship. Accordingly, for the SIR, a person born before July 1, 1987, would only need to give proof of date and place of their birth.
A child born in India between June 1, 1987 and before the 2003 amendment will have Indian citizenship only if either one of the parents is an Indian citizen at the time of birth. For the SIR, people born during this period must provide proof of their own identity and one parent’s identity.
In the case of a child born after the 2003 amendment, either both parents have to be Indian citizens, or one parent would have to be an Indian citizen while the other is not an ‘illegal migrant’ at the time of birth. For the SIR, those born after December 2, 2004, must give identity proof for themselves as well as both parents.