Chief Minister Siddaramaiah held a meeting with leaders and representatives of prominent citizens’ groups on the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, in Bengaluru on May 8.

More than a dozen leaders attended the meeting and discussed the implications of the SIR exercise in the State.

Congress leaders have linked the All India Trinamool Congress’s (TMC) defeat in West Bengal to alleged large-scale voter deletions during the SIR of electoral rolls. However, the government has not formally announced any decision to oppose the SIR process, sources said.

Ministers are believed to have discussed the SIR process during the Cabinet meeting held on Thursday (May 7). However, no decision was taken either to oppose the proposed revision or to seek a complete overhaul of the process, as demanded by some citizens’ groups.

Mr. Siddaramaiah said the defeat of the TMC could have been caused either by anti-incumbency or by the deletion of voters’ names during the SIR exercise. The State will go to Legislative Assembly polls in 2028.

The representatives later met Deputy Chief Minister D.K. Shivakumar and other Ministers with the same demand.

The Ministers, however, remained non-committal, said the delegation members who were informed that decisions would be taken after further discussions. 

Inconclusive discussion

Vinay Sreenivasa, lawyer and campaign member, expressed concerns in the meetings that SIR could lead to exclusion of people in the State in large numbers from the voting rolls, similar to that in West Bengal.

“Unfortunately, the discussion that followed only led to the foregrounding of some steps that the State government may take to minimise deletions. Neither the Chief Minister nor the Deputy Chief Minister made a commitment to oppose the SIR,” said a statement from the campaign. 

Demands reiterated

The campaign members further urged the government to assess options to conduct elections through paper ballots in Karnataka, form a team of legal experts and activists to come up with strategy to prevent the implementation of SIR in the State, and organise efforts to ensure ward-level and panchayat-level help desks to assist voters.