SIR amounts to ‘vote theft’, say protesters in Bengaluru

Demanding the resignation and arrest of Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar for making “massive and unprecedented changes to voter databases”, members of the All India Students’ Association (AISA) staged a protest in Bengaluru on Friday as part of a nationwide agitation seeking action against the CEC. 

The protesters argued that key decisions relating to the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls were pushed through under Mr. Kumar without the authorisation or approval of the other two Election Commissioners, even when the Commissioners had objected to the changes, describing them as “unauthorised and illegal”. 

The protesters said that if Mr. Kumar did not resign, they would intensify the agitation and reach out to Opposition parties to press for impeachment proceedings against the CEC in Parliament. 

Pointing to an unprecedented scale of deletions, AISA members said more than 13 crore names had been excluded from the draft rolls across States where the SIR was conducted. They argued that the exercise was being driven by the BJP’s “fascist politics” and was aimed at retaining its (BJP) voter base while excluding minority communities, describing the exercise akin to “ethnic cleansing”. 

AISA demanded that the SIR be scrapped immediately and that States where the exercise had resulted in deletions restore the electoral rolls that existed before the revision – to the January 2025 rolls. It also sought criminal action against Mr. Kumar, accusing him of “institutional corruption” and intentional “vote theft” involving crores of citizens. 

The protesters also demanded the resignation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah, pointing that the two Election Commissioners had approached the Cabinet Secretary over their objections to the SIR-related decisions, and that the Union government was therefore aware of the concerns but had failed to act on them. 

Condemning the detention of protesters at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi, including AISA national president Neha Bora and activist Yogendra Yadav, the protesters here said that the BJP government had become increasingly authoritarian in dealing with dissent. They said dissenters were being treated as “second-class citizens” and warned that the youth would continue to protest until a fundamental overhaul of the electoral system and its institutions was carried out.