Voters across Karnataka are receiving notices asking them to provide explanations for ‘logical discrepancies’ and other errors that the Election Commission of India’s (ECI) system has flagged during the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR).
In Bengaluru’s Jayanagar, a man got a notice saying the age gap between him and his sibling was less than nine months.
Susheela (name changed) said that her son has been issued a notice asking him to appear on September 8 to clarify two things: the mismatch in his father’s name in the current SIR and the previous exercise in 2002, and the lack of age gap with his twin.
The issue of name/spelling mismatch is one that many people across the country have had to face, as different documents made over time have minor differences in spelling or other changes such as initials expanded into a full name.
Susheela said that her husband’s older documents carry a different version of his name, which was standardised in later documents. In older documents, his name had initials, which he expanded in later documents.
The second problem was to be expected. Susheela’s son is a twin and one of the anomalies or logical discrepancies that the SIR has listed is a less than nine month age gap between two siblings.
“My son and daughter are twins, but there are no documents that say so. I have birth certificates, but even those do not state that they are twins,” she said, hoping that the certificates would be enough.
Birth certificates are one of 12 documents that can be used to prove one’s identity during the ongoing SIR.
But Susheela is surprised that the notice was issued. She says that the BLO mapped her daughter to her grandmother, anticipating the notice, and mapped her son to his father. “How then did this problem arise? We have no record of how our details have been entered, who we were mapped against. They can put whatever they want into the system and even change it later,” Susheela said.
The notice issued to her son asks him to appear on September 8.
Annie Philip, an independent journalist based in Bengaluru and a voter for the past four years, exercised her franchise during the 2023 Assembly elections and the Parliamentary elections in 2024.
She duly filled out her enumeration form and submitted it. However, she was issued a notice on September 5 saying she had not provided details of herself or her relatives that could establish that they were registered voters in the electoral roll prepared during the previous SIR in 2002.
Annie said she had mapped herself to her parents, who are in Kerala, while filling out the enumeration form.
The short window between receiving the notice and appearing for the hearing has also become a concern for voters. Annie was given just two days to appear.
Lekha Adavi, who is part of the ‘My Vote My Right’ coalition, said people who submitted their enumeration forms are included in the draft roll, but notices are being issued to those who are unmapped to parents or relatives whose names appear in the 2002 electoral rolls or have a logical discrepancy in their details.
However, Lekha said that the mapping process itself could be leading to some voters being wrongly categorised as unmapped.
“If someone has mapped themselves to their family in Andhra Pradesh, the BLO here will verify the details on the app. But the details from Andhra Pradesh may be in Telugu. The BLO in Karnataka may not be able to read the Telugu text and could mark the voter as unmapped,” Lekha said.
She said the coalition had also come across cases where voters who had mapped themselves to relatives within Karnataka had received notices citing them as unmapped.
Two Karnataka-based journalists, Rohini Mohan and Samar Halarnkar, posted on social media about the notices they received.
Rohini Mohan spoke about how she had received a notice due to “self name mismatch”. In posts on X, she said, “My name is Rohini in the 2002 voter roll, father's name Mohan, who is apparently a different person than Rohini Mohan whose father is Mohan. So now I have to go for a hearing to prove that Rohini d/o Mohan is Rohini Mohan.”
She then said that she was covering the floods in Nepal and noted that she would have to appear in person to clear her name. “In a ravaged world, must we inflict more pain on ourselves? How many Indians will be able to prove their #citizenship in this unnecessary bureaucratic farce?”
Samar Halarnkar said he learned by chance that he and his 90-year-old mother had been issued notices when someone posted a list on a WhatsApp group. On scrolling through the list, he discovered that both he and his mother had been flagged even though the ECI had matched his EPIC number with the 2002 electoral roll.
He acknowledged that his “Hindu, upper class” privilege afforded him a “cupboard full of identity documents” due to which he would “make the cut somehow” despite the physical obstacles to reaching the government office where the hearing was scheduled.
He added, “This is how a seemingly bureaucratic exercise has morphed into a chaotic, traumatic, unfair test of whether citizens can prove their right to vote—and, for millions, their right to belong to India and be Indian. Universal adult franchise indeed.”
According to Election Commission officials, voters who receive notices are required to physically appear for the hearing. The Electoral Registration Officer (ERO) has the final authority to decide whether a voter’s name should be retained on the final electoral roll or removed if the voter fails to participate in the verification process.
However, once the final electoral roll is published, aggrieved voters can file a first appeal with the District Magistrate and a second appeal with the Chief Electoral Officer of the state.
But voters have questioned the short time they are being given to respond. Some have also asked why they are required to travel to the ERO’s office to establish their details, instead of officials visiting them to verify the documents.
One X user from Bengaluru expressed his frustration at having a bunch of documents, none of which were acceptable to the ECI. “Yesterday I went to hearing in person and was shocked to know that Aadhar card, PAN card, IT returns file, Voter ID, Property tax receipt, Driver's license, Electricity and Water bill, Gas bill, all these are not valid proof!... if above documents are not considered as valid proof then what to do? Why is India progressing backwards under ur leadership? In AI era it should be simple process why are you making it complicated? #SIR”