If you've been on Bengaluru WhatsApp groups recently, you've probably seen some version of the same message.
"Has your BLO come?"
"Do I need my parents' voter details?"
"What happens if I can't find old records?"
"Will my name get deleted?"
For a process that was supposed to clean up electoral rolls, Karnataka's Special Intensive Revision, or SIR, has generated an extraordinary amount of confusion.
What's striking is that the confusion doesn't seem to stop with voters.
Even political parties are confused.
And in many cases, the Booth Level Officers, the people tasked with implementing the exercise, also appear to be grappling with the process.
Across Bengaluru, people have reported receiving different instructions from different officials.
Terms like family mapping, progeny mapping, logical discrepancies and Others category have suddenly entered everyday conversations among people who, until a month ago, probably hadn't thought about electoral rolls at all.
Why has this exercise triggered far more questions than answers?
And why does Bengaluru seem to be at the centre of the confusion?
To understand that, we decided to hit the ground across Bengaluru.
We spoke to voters and political representatives
And we followed Booth Level Officers to understand what they were being asked to do and where the biggest points of confusion were.
Let me explain.
The SIR isn't a story that affects just one state and one section of people. It's a process millions of Indians can't ignore. And with every new clarification, the confusion seems to grow.
Most channels have mostly reported on what the EC has said so far with no cross questioning. It is clear whose behalf they are reporting on.
we're reporting it from the ground—speaking to BLOs, voters, and everyone navigating this exercise.
We've already hit the ground in Hyderabad, and we'll keep following this story until the questions around the SIR are answered.
And this week, we were on the ground in Bengaluru.
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Why Bengaluru is struggling more than most places
Think about what Bengaluru looked like in 2002.
Whitefield was still known more for emerging IT campuses than endless apartment towers. Bellandur or Sarjapur Road were nowhere near as densely populated as they are today. Vast stretches of Mahadevapura, Varthur, Hennur and Yelahanka were either sparsely populated or still developing.
The city that existed in 2002 and the city that exists today are almost unrecognisable versions of each other.
Over those twenty-four years, Bengaluru absorbed millions of migrants from across Karnataka and the rest of India. People moved between addresses. Families shifted constituencies multiple times. Students arrived, settled permanently and became voters. Entire neighbourhoods emerged where none existed before.
We even learnt from BLOs that they have found people registered in different constituencies living under the same roof.
So while the SIR may be a state-wide exercise, Bengaluru faces a challenge that few other places do.
It is trying to establish historical continuity in a city whose population, geography and housing patterns have changed dramatically.
A key reason 2002 keeps coming up in discussions around SIR is that the last SIR in Karnataka was supposedly conducted that year. There are of course experts who maintain there was no SIR in 2002, it was a different exercise altogether. Anyway, the current exercise uses those records as an important reference point.
In simple terms, if a voter's name can be traced to the electoral rolls from the 2002 revision, the verification process is generally more straightforward.
The challenge increases when voters are unable to trace the 2002 details or when their names were not in the 2002 list at all.
Voters whose names do not appear in the 2002 electoral rolls are required to provide details of a parent whose name was included in those rolls. The stated objective is to establish a link between a current voter and an earlier electoral record.
This requirement has generated a lot of questions, particularly in Bengaluru.
Many people simply do not know where their parents were registered more than two decades ago. Families have moved cities, districts and states. Old voter IDs have been lost. In some cases, parents have passed away and the family no longer has access to electoral records.
For Bengaluru's migrant population, the search can extend far beyond Karnataka. A voter may currently live in Mahadevapura or RR Nagar, while their parents were registered in a constituency in another part of the country.
There are also practical questions that voters say they have struggled to get clear answers to.
If both parents were voters, whose details should be provided? What if they were registered in different constituencies? What if a parent's electoral details cannot be located?
Several voters told us that they spent days searching archived electoral rolls online
Others said they were relying on elderly relatives to reconstruct addresses and constituency details. Both sound cumbersome.
One of the striking aspects of the SIR controversy is just how confusing the form-filling process has been.
Across Bengaluru, voters repeatedly describe the same experience.
They sit down to fill the form, and realise they do not fully understand what is being asked.
Many forms initially reached households only in Kannada, creating difficulties in a city where large sections of the population speak Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Hindi, Bengali, Marathi or English at home.
But language is only one part of the problem.
Several citizens have said they are unsure which sections are mandatory, which sections can be left blank and which sections officials will fill themselves.
Many voters have also ended up making mistakes simply because instructions were unclear.
For example, one recurring point of confusion concerns the section seeking 2002 electoral details. If a voter has to provide the details of a parent, should that section contain the voter's information or the parent's information? Different voters say they received different answers.
In some places, voters were told to leave sections blank. In others, they were advised to fill every field possible.
Can sibling’s voter details be used to map? Again, different answers have been given.
Now here is the scary part. After filling the SIR form, voters must sign a declaration that says if the information provided is incorrect, they shall be liable for punishment. And the BLOs too must sign a declaration saying they have verified the details from the 2002 rolls.
Ignorance and unintentional mistakes by voters and BLOs will be penalised while those designing this flawed system are not held to account.
This is making many even more anxious while filling their forms.
For women there is another layer of complication. If your name changed after getting married, it makes it harder to look for details in the 2002 list. This requires additional documents.
The SIR exercise is also disproportionately affecting women and transgender persons. Many transgender people, especially those estranged from their families after disclosing their gender identity, are unable to produce family records or older electoral documents.
Women, too, have seen significant exclusions—in West Bengal, they account for nearly 62% of voters deleted or placed under adjudication after the SIR.
In 37 out of Bihar’s 38 districts, more women voters have been deleted from the rolls than men.
Confusion among BLOs exists even when it comes to spellings.
Some voters were reportedly advised to reproduce names exactly as they appeared in older electoral rolls, even if the spellings were wrong. Others were encouraged to use corrected versions.
One resident told us that when she asked her BLO how to fill a particular section, the official simply advised her to leave it blank because he himself could not explain it.
Another BLO admitted that citizens should watch Election Commission videos online as that’s better in explaining things.
For BLOs trying to establish continuity between past and present records, processes like past delimitation, changed names of localities or roads or buildings creates enormous complications.
The voter may exist.
The family may exist.
The address may no longer exist in a recognisable form.
One of the most misunderstood aspects of the exercise involves a category called "Others."
Almost 3000 voters have been placed in this category as of July 13 in Karnataka alone.
The problem is that many people, including some BLOs, have no idea what the classification means.
Karnataka Chief Electoral Officer V Anbukumar reportedly said that the others category marks people who refused to sign the enumeration form.
But BLOs tell us that there is a separate section for those who refused to sign the form on the app BLOs use.
Meanwhile BLOs say it's for voters whose records couldn't be linked to 2002 electoral roll or where progeny mapping had failed.
For many voters, being labelled "Others" immediately creates anxiety. People assume they have been marked as suspicious, ineligible or at risk of deletion.
A few BLOs that TNM spoke to said that they have not been briefed about who qualifies as “Others” and have not classified anyone under this category.
But, if we are to go by the West Bengal playbook, the same category was used for voters whose automated mapping failed and needed manual verification.
The reality appears to be more administrative than that.
The category largely captures people whose records cannot be neatly mapped. But what does that really mean?
The SIR process relies heavily on digital matching and record linkage.
To trace details from 2002, voters often need to search through online electoral records.
There have been instances where voters enter their details and receive "record not found" messages despite having voter IDs and having voted in previous elections.
Others have reported cases where entering an EPIC number produces a completely different person's name.
Spelling variations create additional complications.
Lakshmi becomes Laxmi.
Initials appear in one record and disappear in another.
Names recorded in Kannada may be transliterated differently in English databases.
Small inconsistencies that may have gone unnoticed for years suddenly become important when records are being matched across decades.
The most consequential phase of the exercise may still be ahead.
After draft electoral rolls are published, officials are expected to identify what are called logical discrepancies.
These are essentially data patterns that trigger additional verification.
The categories include unusually small age gaps between siblings, age differences between parents and children that EC thinks is implausible that is minimum 15 years and maximum 40. Mismatched parent names, differences between current and historical records, missing documentation and situations where Aadhaar is the only supporting document submitted.
One aspect often overlooked in public discussion is the pressure on BLOs themselves.
Many are juggling regular government duties while simultaneously conducting voter verification.
Election officials have acknowledged that BLOs are working long hours, including weekends and public holidays, to complete targets.
Most have received only brief training before deployment.
One BLO admitted that she was not entirely confident about filling her own form.
Officially, SIR is designed as a house-to-house exercise.
On the ground, reality often looks different.
Residents report forms being distributed through apartment associations, community halls, polling booths and temporary collection centres.
Some BLOs are asking residents to come directly to polling stations or nearby cyber cafés because revisiting every household repeatedly is simply not practical.
While technically BLOs are required to visit a household just thrice, in reality, many are forced to visit at least 6-7 times. Can you imagine what kind of a burden that places on them?
The sum total, an exercise that could have been a much simpler one, has put citizens in anxiety and is being rushed through for no eason. Though the Election Commission of India has maintained that the exercise is aimed to weed out illegal immigrants, till today they have not produced any number. Instead, everyone else is bearing the brunt.
Write to me at lme@thenewsminute.com and tell me what your experience with SIR has been. And what issues you want me to take up next.
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Producer: Megha Mukundan, Script: Pooja Prasanna, Inputs: Shivani Kava, Samrah Attar, Anisha Sheth Camera: Ajay R, Akshay Lal, Edit: Nikhil Sekhar ET, Vignesh Manickam