CM Sounds Alarm Over Form 7: Orders Constituency-Wise Scrutiny, Seeks FIRs Where Voter-Deletion Fraud Is Found
By Mohammed Talha Siddi Bapa
Bengaluru: What happens when a voter who is alive is marked ‘dead’, or a family still living at the same address is shown as having ‘shifted’? For the people caught in such classifications during Karnataka’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, an administrative entry could eventually decide whether they retain their right to vote.
A civil society investigation has now brought such cases to the doorstep of the Karnataka government. The Anti-SIR Alliance and Citizens’ Vote Protection Committee submitted a 23-page report to Chief Minister D.K. Shivakumar after undertaking field verification across 100 polling booths in 25 districts.
The figures at the centre of the controversy are substantial. Karnataka had 5,52,49,719 voters in its 2025 electoral roll. The draft roll following the SIR contained 4,44,53,380 voters – a difference of nearly 1.08 crore, or about 19.5 per cent. These voters, placed under different ASDDO categories – Absent, Shifted, Dead, Duplicate and Others – are effectively on the verge of deletion unless their eligibility is established through the prescribed verification and claims process.
According to the civil society report, 65.45 lakh voters were classified as ‘Shifted’, 16.39 lakh as ‘Dead’, 15.17 lakh as ‘Absent’, 7.09 lakh as ‘Duplicate’ and 3.83 lakh under ‘Others’. The concern is not merely the size of these numbers but what investigators say they found when they went looking for the people behind them.
During door-to-door verification, teams reportedly encountered voters who continued to live at their registered addresses although electoral records classified them as shifted or absent. Investigators also reported cases of living persons appearing under the ‘Dead’ category. In other instances, eligible voters allegedly had not received enumeration forms or were unaware that their names were missing from the draft roll.
The investigation combined electoral-roll data, a survey of Booth Level Officers and direct field verification. Its authors acknowledge that 100 booths constitute only a sample of Karnataka’s electoral landscape. They argue, however, that the discrepancies encountered are serious enough to warrant a much wider social audit.
Bengaluru Raises Alarm
Bengaluru has emerged as a particular area of concern. The civil society report points to the sharp reduction in the number of electors appearing in the draft roll and questions whether migration and routine changes of residence adequately explain the scale of voters placed under ASDDO classifications.
The issue assumes particular importance in a city characterised by migration, rented accommodation and frequent changes of residence. Women moving after marriage, migrant labourers, tenants and economically vulnerable citizens can be especially affected when verification depends heavily on residence and documentation.
The report also raises concerns about the possible impact on Dalits, Adivasis, Muslims, nomadic communities, economically weaker sections and residents of informal settlements. These are findings and concerns raised by the investigators and require examination against complete Election Commission data.
The SIR process has not been without corrections. Election authorities have previously restored voters to the rolls after verification where initial classifications were found to be incorrect. This makes the claims-and-objections stage particularly significant for those presently placed in ASDDO categories.
Findings Reach Chief Minister
A delegation that met Chief Minister D.K. Shivakumar was led by actor and activist Prakash Raj and included representatives of political parties, civil society organisations and people’s movements.
Among those present were SDPI Karnataka president Abdul Majeed, state general secretary Afsar Kodlipet, state treasurer Amjad Khan, Welfare Party of India state president Tahir Hussain, Aam Aadmi Party state working president Seetharam Gundappa and Jamaat-e-Islami Hind leader Maulana Mohammed Yusuf Kanni, besides other activists and representatives.
The meeting was not an isolated intervention. It followed the SIR Investigation and Resistance Yatra, through which activists travelled across Karnataka, met affected citizens, collected testimonies and examined electoral-roll changes before compiling their findings.
After receiving the report, Shivakumar sought constituency-wise details concerning Form 7 applications, which are used for objections to inclusion or requests for deletion from electoral rolls. He raised questions over bulk applications and forms allegedly carrying pre-printed voter information and called for scrutiny where manipulation or criminal wrongdoing is suspected.
The Anti-SIR Alliance has called for a scientific social audit to identify eligible citizens wrongly excluded from the draft rolls and facilitate restoration of their names. It has also sought a special session of the Karnataka legislature to discuss the electoral-roll revision.
The controversy will ultimately be tested not by the headline figure alone, but by what happens to each name behind that figure.
The 1.08 crore voters placed in ASDDO categories cannot automatically be described as wrongfully deleted voters; some may genuinely have died, shifted residence or have duplicate registrations. But the cases uncovered during field verification raise a more fundamental question: how many genuine voters could disappear from the final electoral roll simply because an incorrect administrative classification goes unchallenged?
For a voter found alive at the same address but recorded as ‘dead’ or ‘shifted’, SIR is no longer an exercise in cleaning electoral rolls. It becomes a race to prove, before the final list is drawn, that the voter still exists.
