More than 5,000 people gathered at Bengaluru’s Freedom Park on Thursday for a public protest and ‘People’s Tribunal’ against the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, with speakers demanding that the exercise be scrapped and accusing authorities of disenfranchising voters.
The protest brought together activists, political commentators, writers, students and actor-activist Prakash Raj. Participants waved the national flag and the Kannada flag, carried placards and raised slogans against the SIR and the Union government. The gathering was also attended by YouTuber Dhruv Rathee, veteran Kannada writer Devanuru Mahadeva, CJP leaders Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka, and student leader Aishie Ghosh, according to Deccan Herald.
Abhijeet Dipke, founder of the Cockroach Janata Party, linked the protest to wider concerns over electoral representation, delimitation and the role of institutions responsible for maintaining voter rolls. Describing Mahatma Gandhi as the “soul”, B R Ambedkar as the “backbone” and Jawaharlal Nehru as the “mind” of India, Dipke criticised the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and Prime Minister Narendra Modi during his address.
Dipke alleged that voters had been removed from draft electoral rolls during the ongoing SIR and attributed the deletions to Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, Prime Minister Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah. These allegations were made during the protest and were not independently established in the report.
He also claimed that about 13-14% of votes had been deleted and connected the revision exercise to the 2024 Lok Sabha election result, in which the BJP won 240 seats. Dipke further argued that delimitation could reduce South India’s share of Lok Sabha seats and said the region would lead India in the future. The report did not provide supporting official data for these claims.
Prakash Raj described what he called “vote theft” as an insult to citizens’ dignity and alleged that voters from Adivasi, poor, Muslim and other minority communities had been targeted. He said the protest was not limited to a demand for Gyanesh Kumar’s resignation but sought the complete cancellation of the SIR.
Raj said the demonstrators were participating as citizens rather than representatives of a political party and pledged that the street mobilisation would continue until the SIR was withdrawn and voting rights were restored. The report did not include a response from the Election Commission, the Union government or other authorities to the allegations raised at the Bengaluru gathering.
