Civil society groups step up opposition to SIR

Bengaluru

Members of the ‘My Vote, My Right’ coalition held a state-wide protest in Karnataka against the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) on Saturday. In Bengaluru, the coalition of several advocacy groups staged a protest at Freedom Park. The brief protest was followed by an open meeting where the next steps were considered.

With the recent Supreme Court judgment upholding the SIR process, the protest was also used to register the group’s dissatisfaction with the verdict.

“One thing everybody was clear was we are very disappointed with the Supreme Court verdict on the SIR because the Supreme Court has gone against the Constitution and it has been blind to the mass deletions which have happened and to the anarchy created by the Election Commission,” Vinay Sreenivasa of My Vote, My Right said.

The protest was attended by about 150 people and went on for about 45 minutes. Women’s interest groups, minority organizations, student organisations, Dalit groups and adivasi organisations participated in the protest. Participants stated that the SIR had taken away the voting rights of these groups of people where it had been conducted such as Bihar and West Bengal.

“For Muslims, adivasis, women, Dalits, migrant workers and women of all communities, who have moved after marriage, for all of them this is very troubling. Because they have to tally all the documents, they have to sort out these logical discrepancies in small details, this is very dangerous. Along with Muslims, this is dangerous for all other communities, for all Indians. They are trying to break the voters who do not vote for the BJP,” said Mohammed Naeemulla of Bahutva Karnataka.

With the SIR set to begin in Bengaluru from June 20, the group said that the agitations against the SIR will continue. However, with the legal route now no longer available, the group will need to turn to other ideas.

“It is shocking and saddening that the Supreme Court has done this and the protesters are resolved to resist the SIR because it goes against the very promise of political equality which is there in the preamble. One thing is that the Election Commission needs to have a meeting with civil society and the government should also push for this meeting with the chief electoral officer, to say that these are all the concerns with the SIR. But they are not even ready to discuss the concerns, so how can we allow them to go ahead with the SIR in its current form?” Sreenivasa said.

The group made several demands to change the process of the SIR if it goes ahead, including removal of the logical discrepancy rule, publishing of the draft voter list in a machine readable format, publishing the draft voter list in every Gram Panchayat and ward, subjected to public scrutiny and amendments should be made in an open manner and that the process should not be rushed, a minimum of one year should be fixed and there should be six months to review the voter list and prepare a draft list