Bengaluru: At a time when questions of citizenship and democratic participation are stirring deep anxiety across India, Jamaat-e-Islami Hind (JIH) Karnataka organized a high-level consultative meeting on the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) process at Darussalam’s Buffet Auditorium, Queens Road here. The event brought together community leaders, civil society members, legal experts, and human rights activists who voiced serious concern that the ongoing SIR exercise could disenfranchise large sections of India’s poor and marginalized citizens.
The session began with recitation from the Qur’an by Maulana Waheeduddin Khan Umri Madani.
In his opening remarks, Mohammed Yusuf Kanni, State Secretary of JIH Karnataka, contextualized the meeting, emphasizing that the SIR was “not merely a bureaucratic exercise but a civil rights question.” He highlighted the alarming experience of states like Bihar, where SIR operations had reportedly led to the deletion of over 6.8 million names from voter rolls – predominantly belonging to migrant workers, Dalits, Adivasis, and Muslims.
Delivering the keynote address, Nadeem Khan, JIH secretary and APCR General Secretary, explained that SIR is being implemented under the supervision of Election Commission of India (ECI) as part of a nationwide voter list revision and delimitation process. While officially administrative, he cautioned that “its implications are deeply political.”
“Only 8.7 percent of Indians hold passports, and barely 37 percent possess the full set of valid identity documents,” Khan noted. “Under such conditions, demanding strict documentation will inevitably erase millions of citizens from the democratic map.”
Speakers agreed that the risk is not theoretical. In Karnataka, the SIR could disproportionately affect urban and rural Muslim neighborhoods, migrant labor settlements, and women, especially those who face bureaucratic hurdles in updating identity records after marriage or relocation.
Presiding over the meet, Dr. Bilgami Mohammed Saad, Ameer-e-Halqa (State President) of JIH Karnataka, called the SIR “a direct test of India’s constitutional conscience.”
“This is not just an administrative review,” he said. “It is a human rights challenge that strikes at the very foundation of citizenship. If the right to vote becomes conditional upon impossible paperwork, democracy loses its soul.”
He praised the Kerala government’s decision to publicly reject participation in the SIR process, urging Karnataka’s leadership to “take a similarly principled stand in defense of the people’s rights.”
Several civil society representatives described the SIR as a move that “turns citizenship from a birthright into a bureaucratic privilege.” Participants emphasized that those least equipped to navigate official procedures – the poor, nomadic, or socially excluded – would suffer the gravest consequences.
By the end of the meeting, participants adopted a collective resolution calling for:
- A statewide awareness campaign to educate citizens about their rights under SIR;
- Coordination among religious, social, and educational institutions to monitor possible voter exclusions; and
- Public advocacy and legal scrutiny of the ECI’s procedures to ensure transparency and fairness.
Concluding the session, the participants voiced a collective concern, emphasizing that:
“The SIR is not just a matter of human rights; it is about protecting the right to be a citizen. Every adult Indian, regardless of religion, gender, region, or class, must be assured an equal voice in democracy. We pledge to resist any move that seeks to erase that voice under the guise of technical revision.”
The meeting came to an end with a clear message resonating across the hall: “Citizenship is everyone’s right – let no one be erased in SIR.”
