Deleting anti-BJP votes from electoral roll through SIR can be precursor to repealing Indian citizenship, says MP Kanimozhi

DMK alience party cadres staging a demonstration against SIR , in Thoothukudi on Tuesday.
| Photo Credit:
N. RAJESH

The mass deletion of anti-BJP votes from the voters’ list through Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral roll can be the BJP’s first step to repeal their citizenship, as these voters cannot exercise their franchise in any election in future, MP Kanimozhi said.

Addressing the protestors here on Tuesday, she said the DMK, besides filing the case against SIR in the Supreme Court, was expressing its dissent about this ‘hasty and unnecessary’ exercise by organising demonstrations across Tamil Nadu, in which the allies too were participating to express their solidarity. Even though SIR had been done earlier, including in 2002, the Election Commission of India then gave six months for submitting the filled-in forms for enrolling the voters. However, present Chief Election Commissioner had given the voters only 30 days for receiving and submitting the filled-in applications.

Voters who could not find a place in the draft electoral rolls in SIR 2025 could never include their names before the upcoming Assembly elections in 2026 by escalating their grievance with the Electoral Registration Officer, District Electoral Officer or even the Chief Electoral Officer.

Since the SIR was being done in a hasty manner, it was not an exercise to include the genuine voters but to delete the electors who would never support the BJP. Since the SIR done in Bihar, Haryana and Maharashtra had taught bitter lessons to the genuine voters, whose names had been deleted deliberately from the electoral roll, they could not cast their votes in the Assembly elections. Over 68 genuine voters’ names, mostly of Muslims, women, Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribes, had been deleted during the recently conducted SIR in Bihar.

She appealed to the Tamil Nadu voters to support the DMK and its allies in the fight against SIR as this ‘wicked exercise’ would deny them voting right, welfare schemes and above all, cost their citizenship.

Similar agitations were organised in Tirunelveli, Tenkasi and Kanniyakumari districts also by the DMK and the ruling parties electoral allies.