Rally to protest against SIR in Belagavi today

Members of various organizations are organizing rallies to protest against the Election Commission of India’s special intensive review in some cities of northern Karnataka.

The rally started at Ambedkar Circle in Vijayapur on Saturday. Another rally was held in Bagalkot on Sunday.

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

Rallies will be held in Dharwad on Tuesday and Gadag on Wednesday. It ends on Thursday in Haveri.

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

Jagruta Karnataka, Eddelu Karnataka and anti-SIR federations are part of the group organizing the rally.

Their demands are immediate suspension of SIR in Karnataka. If ECI is to continue with SIR, then it should not use logic anomaly detection software. Instead, Gram Sabhas should be held in every village and the electoral roll should be opened openly after public scrutiny, they said.

The electoral roll should be published in a machine-readable format and full transparency should be maintained. The public should have at least six months to provide the necessary documents to file appeals and objections.

Anti-SIR Federation members stage a protest against SIR ECI in Vijayapur on Saturday. | Photo credit: SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT

AHINDA leader SM Patil Ganihar said that a large section of the population does not have a clear idea about SIR and hoped that the march would create awareness about it.

Jamaat-e-Islami Hind General Secretary Yusuf Kanni said there was widespread confusion about the exercise among voters who wanted to know more about him.

According to him, the aim of the rally is to create awareness about it.

He said the anti-SIR coalition 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 ECI’s widespread agitation, SIR continues in 13 states in phase two. In phase one, over 6.5 million people were excluded from voter rolls. SIR is being used to take away the basic right of voters in a democracy. Officers are using SIR as a means to disenfranchise the poor, women, minorities and the disenfranchised.”

“Election officials force people to produce such documents which are extremely difficult to obtain. The survey says that an estimated 36.5% of people have such documents. The rest do not. Most of them are poor, women, deprived communities and daily wage earners. Where should such documents be obtained from?” he said.

“The first round of mapping has shown that more than 50 million people in Karnataka are facing the threat of disenfranchisement. We must fight against it. We should all realize 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 deprive people of their right to vote through SIR. “They are trying to subvert the democratic system. This cannot be accepted,” he said.

SUCI District Secretary B. Bhagwan Reddy said the country’s economy is collapsing under massive debt, unregulated privatization, misuse of agencies like ED, IT and CBI and ineffective management of exams like NEET, but the central government is focusing 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 heading for dictatorship despite carefully prepared elections. We should all realize that SIR is not only a minority problem but also a problem faced by all the less fortunate like the poor, landless, factory workers, women, Dalits and tribals,” he said.

Congress leader Suresh Bijapur warned that the ECI, a constitutional body, should not be 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 try the patience of the people,” he said.

Published – 14 Jun 2026 21:02 IST