Activist and actor Prakash Raj speaking at a press conference in Mangaluru on September 28, 2026.
| Photo Credit: H.S. MANJUNATH
Actor Prakash Raj on Monday demanded scrapping of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) being undertaken by the Election Commission of India (ECI) and alleged that the process has been denying the constitutionally guaranteed rights of citizens.
Mr. Raj told reporters here that all decisions taken by the ECI since 2023 should be reviewed by the Supreme Court and, if found lacking in law, be scrapped in the light of serious allegations of bypassing the other two Election Commissioners by Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar.
Revising the electoral roll by deleting infiltrators, the dead, and other such cases was a welcome move. However, the process adopted by the ECI, which was resulting in genuine voters being left out of the rolls and forced to stand in queues to get their names added, has become questionable, Mr. Raj said. In Karnataka, Mr. Raj said the Commission has adopted a hasty process, giving very little time for the exercise and thereby exerting unbearable pressure on booth-level officials.
He has been holding meetings with like-minded persons and organisations across Karnataka and the country, eliciting their opinions on the SIR process. Teams of dedicated persons were collecting data from at least 100 booths where large-scale SIR discrepancies were reported, and the details were being tabulated to present before the Supreme Court as evidence of a flawed SIR process, Mr. Raj said.
It was a matter of serious concern that over 13 crore voters across the country and about 1.08 crore out of 5.4 crore total voters in Karnataka were identified as Absent, Shifted, Dead, Duplicate, and Others (ASDDO). In addition, about 43 lakh voters in Karnataka were served notices for logical discrepancies in their details. The numbers are huge, Mr. Raj said, questioning the ECI’s right to delete names without issuing notice to the voter concerned.
In West Bengal, about 38 lakh voters whose names were deleted have approached election tribunals, which so far have decided about 90,000 claims. Of these 90,000, about 81,000 were found to be eligible voters, Mr. Raj said, alleging that the ECI has blatantly denied their franchise rights.
Mr. Raj further questioned the ECI’s handling of electoral roll data and said excessive centralisation of the database could undermine the authority of Electoral Registration Officers at the sub-divisional and district levels. There were chances of introducing large-scale changes in the rolls with a centralised ECINET.
Mr. Raj said the Supreme Court should take action immediately, before relevant documents ‘catch fire’ and get destroyed.
SIR Pratishodha and Pratirodha Karnataka leaders K.L. Ashok, Abdul Majeed, Vinod Mascarenhas, C.H. Abdul Salam, and others were present.
Published – September 28, 2026 08:08 pm IST
