SIR Must Be Carried Out Strictly in Accordance With Constitution: Minister Priyank Kharge
Twenty three opposition parties accuse the Election Commission of favouring the BJP and call for judicial intervention to safeguard electoral fairness.
Karnataka Rural Development, Panchayat Raj, and IT-BT Minister Priyank Kharge has strongly stated that the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls must be executed strictly within constitutional boundaries. Addressing a convention on electoral transparency and voter rights, Kharge expressed serious concern that the state-wide cleanup drive could lead to the unintended, mass disenfranchisement of poor and historically marginalized groups.
The minister’s warning follows the official state-wide launch of the month-long field verification drive by approximately 59,000 Booth Level Officers (BLOs). While acknowledging the logistical need to clean up data duplicates and filter out invalid listings, Kharge argued that an overly rigid, bureaucratic approach fundamentally violates the democratic ethos enshrined in the Indian Constitution.
A central point of contention remains the rigorous documentation criteria initially pushed by central election bodies. Kharge pointed out that vulnerable segments of the population—particularly landless rural workers, migrant communities, and low-income women—often lack access to complex legal identity markers like Permanent Residential Certificates. He stressed that a citizen’s right to vote should never depend on their ability to navigate complicated bureaucratic networks.
To protect these populations, the minister praised the state administration’s proactive decision to issue residential certificates quickly through nearly 50,000 ward-level centers and the Seva Sindhu online portal. He emphasized that the primary metric of a successful election commission should be how many eligible citizens it includes in the democratic process, rather than how aggressively it removes names from the voter registry.
Kharge called upon civil society organizations, community leaders, and all political parties to closely monitor the house-to-house enumeration process until the July 29 submission deadline. He reassured the public that the ruling Congress party has mobilized thousands of grassroots booth-level agents to cross-verify the work of local officers, ensuring that the constitutional “right to vote” remains accessible to every legitimate resident of Karnataka.