SIR: Activists will conduct a social audit in Kodagu on September 29 for erasure

Officials verifying details during a public hearing under special intensive review on Thursday in Malleshwaram, Bengaluru. | Photo credit: SUDHAKARA JAIN

Civil society groups, including Eddel Karnataka, will conduct a social audit of the draft voter list in Kodagu on September 29. Team members will read the draft list and the Absent, Shifted, Duplicate, Dead, and Others (ASDDO) list to compare the entries with the pre-SIR electoral rolls. The groups will present the findings of the social audit to Chief Minister DK Shivakumar on September 30.

The comparison, the groups said, is aimed at finding out how many people who continue to live at the same address were incorrectly flagged for deletion on the ASDDO list and how many people continue to live in the area but did not receive enumeration forms.

The groups had earlier conducted training and pilot survey in HD Kote taluk before starting SIR. Around 1,441 families were visited during the survey. Using the original and revised electoral rolls, village officials, gram panchayat members, local leaders and anganwadi workers went door-to-door and verified the names of more than 5,000 voters with household heads or members. The teams identified persons to be added to or removed from the list and recorded corrections to names, addresses, dates of birth and other details. Necessary forms such as Form 6 for inclusion and Form 8 for corrections were also filled for such cases.

The groups said the terrain of Kodagu posed accessibility challenges for booth level officers (BLOs) during mapping and distribution of enumeration forms. Several areas could not be reached even by two-wheelers and had to be reached on foot, they said. Civil society groups have argued that people living in such areas may have been left out of the SIR process.

The groups also said tribal people in the region faced difficulties in creating documents. Many tribal workers, including bonded labourers, do not have access to their own documents, with Aadhaar cards and other documents being kept by contractors in some cases. Frequent migration and relocation for work has also made it difficult for some people to produce proof of residence, they said.

While civil society groups have raised concerns about the possibility of gaps due to migration and difficult terrain, Kodagu recorded the highest mapping rate before the start of SIR (over 98%), according to official data. At the same time, more than 8% of voters were marked in the ASDDO categories and subsequently deleted.

Published – 24 September 2026 22:00 IST