SIR: 'Big conspiracy' going on to take away voting rights of poor voters, says Shivakumar

Karnataka Deputy Chief Minister D K Shivakumar on Friday said that a big conspiracy is going on to take away the voting rights of poor voters in the name of SIR, as he called on everyone to be very careful.He said the state Congress is creating awareness among its Booth Level Agents BLAs and legislators regarding the Special Intensive Revision SIR process, and will also create awareness among people in the days ahead.The Election Commission EC announced that the SIR process in Karnataka will start on June 20.

Karnataka Deputy Chief Minister D K Shivakumar on Friday said that a ''big conspiracy'' is going on to take away the voting rights of poor voters in the name of SIR, as he called on everyone to be ''very careful''.

He said the state Congress is creating awareness among its Booth Level Agents (BLAs) and legislators regarding the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) process, and will also create awareness among people in the days ahead.

The Election Commission (EC) announced that the SIR process in Karnataka will start on June 20. The last SIR in the state was done in 2002 when Karnataka had 3.55 crore voters. Now, the state has 5.55 crore voters.

The final electoral roll will be published on October 7.

''SIR has been announced in Karnataka. It is important. Everyone must submit an application, or they will lose their vote. We have seen what happened in other states. A big conspiracy is going on to take away the voting right of poor voters. We should be very careful,'' Shivakumar said.

Speaking to reporters here, he said, ''Whichever party one may belong to or supports, everyone should have voting rights. We are trying to create awareness among our BLAs and legislators, so we have called them for a meeting.''.

''Notification has come (for SIR). The date has been fixed. Everyone has to give an application and documents, objections and other things may take time. Any errors may lead to losing voting rights. They will not have identification cards, and they may face trouble in getting old age and widow pensions and schemes like Gruha Lakshmi, Gruha Jyothi and others. So we want to create awareness among people. So we have called a meeting,'' he added.

State Congress has called a meeting of its ministers, MPs, MLAs, MLCs, candidates who contested assembly and parliament elections, and district presidents of the party on Sunday to discuss SIR and GBA polls.

AICC general secretary in charge of the state, Randeep Singh Surjewala, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, along with AICC secretaries and KPCC office-bearers, will participate in the meeting.

Karnataka Cabinet on Thursday discussed making every possible effort to protect citizens' voting rights, while expressing concern over the lack of transparency in the SIR process.

The Cabinet also deliberated on several issues, including whether to move the Supreme Court on matters related to SIR and whether the final voter list should be placed before the apex court before its formal finalisation, Law and Parliamentary Affairs Minister H K Patil said after the meeting.

He said the discussions were inconclusive and that a final decision would be taken after further deliberations over the next three to four days.