A large protest against the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls was held at Bengaluru’s Freedom Park on Thursday, with organisers demanding that the process be withdrawn and elections be conducted using ballot papers. The gathering also led Bengaluru city police to deploy about 900 personnel around the protest venue to maintain law and order and manage possible traffic congestion on Sheshadri Road.
The event, organised by several progressive and civil society groups, was described as a ‘Janata Nyayalaya’ or people’s court. Thousands of people attended, including young people and members of Generation Z. YouTuber and digital content creator Dhruv Rathee, actor and activist Prakash Raj, economist Parakala Prabhakar, senior writer Devanur Mahadeva, CJP founder Abhijit Dipke and coordinators Ashutosh Ranka and Sourav Das were among those present, according to Prajavani.
Speakers at the gathering accused the Election Commission of acting as a proxy for the Bharatiya Janata Party. They alleged that eligible voters’ names were being removed arbitrarily during the SIR process and claimed that more than one crore of Karnataka’s 5.5 crore voters could face the risk of having their names deleted or excluded. These claims were made by the protest participants and were not independently established in the supplied report.
Protesters carried placards calling for the removal of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, withdrawal of the SIR process and a return to ballot-paper elections. The gathering also included images of revolutionary figures such as Bhagat Singh, Chandra Shekhar Azad and Che Guevara.
Former minister and actor ‘Mukhyamantri’ Chandru criticised the Union government’s policies while speaking to Prajavani at the meeting. He alleged that eligible voters were being removed under the SIR exercise and described the process as an attempt to alter election results through what he called unconstitutional methods. He also demanded the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah.
The protest placed Freedom Park, a designated public gathering space in central Bengaluru, at the centre of a wider civic-administration challenge: allowing a large political assembly while maintaining public safety and traffic movement in a dense city corridor. Police presence was increased around the venue, with personnel assigned both to security and to managing possible disruption on surrounding roads. The supplied report did not provide details of the protest’s duration, the organisers’ future programme or any response from the Election Commission, the Union government or the other officials named by the speakers.
