A delegation from the My Vote, My Right coalition met the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) of Karnataka on Tuesday, May 19, raising concerns over the impending Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls scheduled to begin on June 20.
The delegation included founders of the Trans Feminist Collective — activists Akkai Padmashali and Sowmya A — along with activists Vinay Sreenivasa and Lekha Adavi.
The activists said transgender persons, sex workers and devadasis had been excluded from the pre-SIR mapping process and warned that the upcoming revision could lead to large-scale disenfranchisement due to documentation barriers. They demanded that the CEO establish dedicated help desks for vulnerable communities and convene a meeting with civil society organisations before the SIR begins.
According to the delegation, the CEO assured them that voter facilitation centres would be set up at the ward level to assist voters during the process.
Earlier in the day, members of the My Vote, My Right coalition addressed a press conference, calling the SIR exercise a “systemic tool for mass disenfranchisement that violates foundational constitutional principles.” They demanded that the state government and the Election Commission suspend SIR operations until transparent legal protocols are established.
The activists expressed concerns over the nationwide three-phase rollout of the SIR exercise, which has already drawn controversy after nearly six crore names were removed from voter rolls in states including Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal during the first two phases. Karnataka’s month-long house-to-house verification is scheduled to begin on June 30.
Writer and activist Sripad Bhat alleged that the SIR violated Article 326 of the Constitution and Section 21(3) of the Representation of the People Act, 1950, which bars removal of names before the final voter list is declared.
“The Election Commission, whose actual duty is to encourage and facilitate voting, is instead pushing voters out of the electoral rolls,” he said, describing the SIR as a tool of mass exclusion.
He also criticised the differing approaches of state and Union governments toward those omitted from the rolls, noting that while the Supreme Court had observed that affected voters could cast their vote in the next election, the Chief Ministers of Bihar and West Bengal were “openly declaring that anyone whose name does not appear on the SIR list will have their ration cards confiscated and will be barred from receiving benefits under any government welfare schemes.”
Questioning the Congress’s position, Bhat referred to omissions in West Bengal and Bihar attributed to “logical discrepancies” and said, “In Kerala, they at least accepted a caste certificate and a residency certificate… Has any such protective measure been considered here? No.”
He said Karnataka required over one lakh Booth Level Agents (BLAs) but currently had only around 27,000. “The Congress party needs to deploy BLAs on a massive scale,” he said.
Criticising the party’s approach, he added that some leaders and MLAs were already anticipating defeat in 2028, saying, “Why should we give ourselves a headache over voter list revisions? Let’s just coast through these five years,” which he called “an absolute tragedy.”
Activist Mamatha Yajaman from Naaveddu Nilladidre – a women’s rights organisation – questioned the urgency of implementing the SIR before the Supreme Court’s ruling. She said the SIR classification format itself contained errors, including the absence of a “daughter-in-law” category, creating “massive legal discrepancies.”
She pointed to the difficulties faced by women in inter-caste and inter-religious marriages who may not have access to ancestral documents.
“They are already cast out by their conservative families for marrying outside their community. When they are entirely cut off from their families, where are they supposed to go to find their ‘historical’ or ancestral documents?” she asked.
Isaac Amruthraj, State Convenor of Slum Janara Sanghatane Karnataka, highlighted the impact on slum dwellers repeatedly displaced by urban development projects. He said documentation gaps and clerical errors were common, adding: “They fail to answer even our most basic questions, repeatedly telling us, ‘We are discussing it, we are looking into it.’”
Maitreyi Krishnan, president of the All India Lawyers’ Association for Justice, questioned what safeguards existed to ensure migrant workers did not lose their voting rights. She also criticised the BJP’s push for SIR, asking whether its position implied that “the working class, Dalits, the poor, Adivasis, and women should not have the right to vote?”
Trans-rights activist Christy Raj said the lack of recognition for the official Transgender Certificate, issued only since 2019, had created major inconsistencies.
“Why hasn’t the Election Commission listed the official TG Certificate as a valid document?” he asked.
Describing the mismatch between his updated identity documents and older records, he added: “How is the automated SIR system supposed to reconcile this ‘logical discrepancy’ without human empathy and proper legal guidelines?”
Akkai Padmashali said Booth Level Officers (BLOs) must be sensitised to the concerns of transgender persons.
“BLOs should be sensitized to the issues and concerns faced by trans-people and protect their identity during the SIR process,” she said.
This article was written by a student interning with TNM.
