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 SIR of electoral rolls, an administrative entry could eventually decide whether they retain their right to vote.
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.
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’.
Chief Minister Shivakumar staged a nearly six-hour dharna at the office of Chief Electoral Officer V. Anbukkumar on Oct. 1, demanding investigation and criminal action over alleged bulk filing of Form 7 applications seeking deletion of voters from the electoral rolls.