SIR has gaps, mismatches and arbitrary aspects: KPCC president

KPCC president B.K. Hariprasad. | Photo Credit: File photo KPCC president B.K. Hariprasad on Friday (September 18) said the party was of a strong opinion that the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) process had “gaps, mismatches, lopsidedness and arbitrary” aspects and sought clarifications and assurances from the Chief Electoral Officer, Karnataka. In a letter to CEO V. Anbu Kumar, referring to the draft electoral roll published on August 24, Mr. Hariprasad questioned that the 2025 final electoral roll had 5,54,22,344 electors and the same number was shown when SIR began on June 30. He has asked whether there were any “additions, deletions, rectifications” to the 2025 final list before the revision began. He also questioned the difference between the number of names flagged in the Absent, Shifted, Duplicate, Dead and Others (ASDDO) category and the actual deletions from the 2025 final roll. Mr. Hariprasad said that according to the party, the two figures do not consistently match across Assembly constituencies, with the ASDDO figure being higher in some constituencies and lower in others. He said these differences were being categorised as “unexplained voters” and called for an Assembly constituency-wise reconciliation of the figures. Unmatched votersFurther pointing at the “unmatched voters”, he said these were cases where names appearing in the draft roll were not found in the corresponding 2025 final roll data for the respective booth. “Such cases were being identified as unmatched voter and needed voter-wise classification.“ He added that there had been “massive shifting between polling booths” in many Assembly constituencies when the areas in the SIR lists were compared with the 2025 final roll. The party said this made booth-wise comparison with the earlier roll and Form-20 analysis difficult. It has asked the ECI to provide complete figures of “Old-Part/New-Part mapping” (done after rationalisation of polling stations) and explain the need for the “massive shifting”. The KPCC has also complained that parts of the 2025 electoral roll PDFs for specific Assembly constituencies are not available on the ECI website. The party said this was preventing it from carrying out the required comparison with the SIR 2026 data and a detailed analysis. Requesting the ECI not to rush the process to meet the schedule, Mr. Hariprasad said, if done this way, many eligible voters could be placed in an adverse situation and may lose their voting right. Published - September 18, 2026 08:32 pm IST