The Congress-led Karnataka government will constitute a special committee headed by former chairman of the Legislative Council V.R. Sudarshan to frame the State’s conditions and objections against the Special Intensive Revision (SIR), KPCC president B.K. Hariprasad said during an interaction with The Hindu. 

He said that from Tuesday (June 23), divisional-level meetings will be held across the State to discuss the SIR exercise, decide the party’s strategy, and prepare formal representations to the Election Commission of India (ECI). “The Congress has already taken a decision to oppose the SIR, a position also reiterated at recent meetings of the Congress Working Committee (CWC),” Mr. Hariprasad said. 

Residential certificate

He said the State will also intervene against the ECI’s insistence on Permanent Residential Certificates (PRC) and its refusal to accept residential certificates, as directed by the Karnataka government. 

Recently, the Karnataka government had directed Panchayat Development Officers (PDOs) to issue residential certificates as supporting documents for those who require them. However, Election Commission guidelines accept only PRCs. 

“This is just to create confusion. They say 11 documents can be used, any one of them can be produced, but the intention is very clear — to de-franchise the poor people of this country, especially women and the weaker sections of society. We have seen it in Bihar and West Bengal,” he alleged. 

The Congress will insist that residential certificates issued at the local level, including those issued by PDOs in rural areas, must be accepted, he said. “The role of the Election Commission is not to tighten documentation norms. Its responsibility is to conduct elections, not create barriers to voter inclusion,” he said. 

Going door-to-door

Acknowledging that large-scale deletions from electoral rolls during the SIR process have occurred because people were unable to produce stipulated documents, Mr. Hariprasad said Congress cadres have been instructed at the booth level to go door-to-door, identify voter issues, and resolve them. 

“Karnataka will not go the West Bengal way. There is a 35 lakh gap between the Trinamool Congress and the BJP, with 27 lakh names under adjudication. That means only an 8 lakh difference. For those 27 lakh people, they are saying they can vote in the next five years. Nobody knows who will be left out,” he said. 

When asked about concerns that the Supreme Court is endorsing the ECI’s norms, hence limiting the scope for the State to intervene, Mr. Hariprasad said, “The Supreme Court is not a holy cow. We will go by the Constitution and its values. We will stick to that.” 

Referring to electoral roll revisions in West Bengal, he said irregularities had taken place. “Two MLAs elected there were Muslims; their names were under adjudication. After the list was announced, they went to the High Court and got cleared. Only then could they contest. These injustices are happening.... But we will have to fight in the people’s court.”