Rally to protest against SIR in Belagavi today

Members of various organisations are organising rallies to protest against Election Commission of India’s Special Intensive Revision drive in some North Karnataka towns.

A rally began at Ambedkar Circle in Vijayapura on Saturday. Another rally was held in Bagalkot on Sunday.

In fact, the campaign began on Saturday from Bidar. A rally will be held in Belagavi on Monday.

Rallies will be held in Dharwad on Tuesday and Gadag on Wednesday. They will conclude in Haveri on Thursday.

The campaign will culminate in a mega rally at the Freedom Park in Bengaluru on Saturday.

Jagruta Karnataka, Eddelu Karnataka and the anti-SIR federation are part of the group that is organising the rallies.

Their demands are immediate suspension of SIR in Karnataka. If the ECI is to go ahead with SIR, then it should not use the logical discrepancy detection software. Instead, it should hold Gram Sabhas in every village and the voter list should be finalized openly after public scrutiny, they said.

The voter list should be published in machine readable format and complete transparency should be maintained. The public should be given at least six months to provide the necessary documents to file appeals and objections.

AHINDA leader S.M. Patil Ganihar said that a large section of the population did not have a clear idea about SIR and hoped the march will create awareness about it.

General secretary of Jamaat-e-Islami Hind Yusuf Kanni said that there is wide-spread confusion about the exercise among electors who wanted to know more about it.

The rallies are aimed at creating awareness about this, he said.

He said that the anti-SIR coalition has managed to include about 150 organizations and secular parties. Meetings and rallies are being held in 100 taluks in all districts of the State till Thursday.

“Despite wide-spread agitation, the ECI is going ahead with SIR in 13 States in the second phase. In the first phase, over 6.5 crore people were excluded from voter lists. SIR is being used to snatch the fundamental right of voters in a democracy. Officers are using SIR as a means to deprive the poor, women, minorities and members of the deprived communities, the right to vote,” he said.

“Election officers are forcing the people to produce such documents that are extremely difficult to obtain. A survey says that an estimated 36.5% of the people have such documents. The rest do not have them. Most of them are the poor, women, deprived communities and daily wage earners. From where should get such documents?” he said.

“The first round of mapping has indicated that over 50 lakh people in Karnataka are facing the threat of losing the right to vote. We need to fight against this. All of us should realise that we have a responsibility to protect the spirit of the Constitution,” he said.

Akhand Rajya Raitha Sangh secretary Arvind Kulkarni said that the ruling BJP is behind the conspiracy to take away the right to vote from the people through SIR. “It is trying to subvert the democratic system through this. This cannot be accepted,” he said.

SUCI district secretary B. Bhagwan Reddy said that the country’s economy is collapsing under massive debt, unregulated privatization, misuse of agencies like ED, IT and CBI and inefficient management of examinations like NEET, but the Central government is focussed on issues like SIR.

“It is unfortunate that even the Supreme Court is in favor of SIR,” he said.

“The intentions behind SIR are suspect. It seems we are moving towards a dictatorship through a carefully curated election. We should all realise that SIR is not only a problem of minorities but also a problem faced by all the less fortunate ones like the poor, landless labour, factory workers, women, Dalits, and tribals,” he said.

Congress leader Suresh Bijapur warned that the ECI, a constitutional body, should not become politically motivated.

“We are not saying that the names of illegal immigrants should not be removed. We are saying that the names of Indians should not be removed. The Union government should not test the patience of the people,” he said.