The INDIA alliance constituents in Karnataka launched a statewide campaign against the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls on Friday, adopting the slogan “Save the Vote, Save the Nation”. The decision was taken at a meeting of the alliance partners at the Legislators’ Home in Bengaluru.
The meeting was chaired by KPCC president B.K. Hariprasad and attended by AICC secretary Gopinath Palaniappan, CPI(M) state secretary K. Prakash, CPI state secretary Sathi Sundaresh and SP state president Manjappa Yadav, among others.
At the heart of the campaign are three demands: the scrapping of the Special Intensive Revision, the restoration of allegedly deleted voters’ names, and the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar. Hariprasad alleged that around 13 crore voters had been removed from the rolls nationwide, calling voting rights the foundation of democracy.
The charge strikes at the core of the alliance’s narrative. The INDIA bloc has argued that revisions of the electoral rolls, carried out at speed, risk disenfranchising genuine voters — particularly the poor, migrants and first-time voters who may struggle with documentation. The demand for the CEC’s resignation raises the temperature further, placing the campaign in direct confrontation with the poll body.
The campaign will begin with a large protest at Ramlila Maidan in New Delhi on November 1, followed by a rally in Bengaluru on November 5. From there, the agitation will be expanded to the district and taluk levels across Karnataka, leaders said.
To steer the campaign, a state-level coordination committee has been formed comprising the Congress, CPI, CPI(M), CPI(ML) Liberation, Samajwadi Party and the Forward Bloc. The committee will finalise the calendar of protests and outreach programmes in the coming days.
The meeting marks the first major coordinated action by the INDIA bloc in Karnataka around the electoral-roll issue, which the alliance has raised consistently at the national level in recent weeks. Party leaders indicated that similar mobilisation would be taken up in other states as well.
The timing is significant. With the campaign opening in the national capital before moving to Bengaluru, the alliance is signalling that Karnataka will be the launchpad for a wider agitation. Whether the street campaign translates into sustained political pressure will depend on how the district and taluk-level phase unfolds after the two opening rallies.
For now, the message from the Legislators’ Home is unambiguous: the alliance intends to keep the voter-roll question at the centre of political discourse in the weeks ahead.
