While flagging vagueness and potential misuse, the Court suspends a caste-equity framework born out of the alleged suicide of Rohit Vemula and Payal Tadvi petition
West Bengal’s ongoing and controversial Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls has—rather shockingly-- summoned Nobel laureates, actors, athletes, poets, ministers, and war heroes for verification hearings! While the ECI defends itself citing ‘due process’, reports from the ground suggest both haste and pre-determined bias; now, because of SC monitoring, the ECI has been compelled to publicise the list of 1.25 crore voters categorised under the ‘logical discrepancy’ category
Separate Supreme Court proceedings concern the failure to issue rejection slips to nearly 19.07 lakh excluded people and identity cards to more than 3.11 crore people included in the final register
After discrepancies in Uttar Pradesh’s electoral rolls prompted AAP leaders to question the Election Commission, the state’s Chief Electoral Officer posted a remark invoking caste and religion, following criticism, the handle apologised for its language, who was responsible for the post, what action has been taken, and why is it still online?
Karnataka’s final SIR roll published on October 27, lists 4.55 crore voters, down from 5.54 crore before the SIR, the draft roll deleted 1.08 crore names, while the final net deletion stands at 99.32 lakh, Bengaluru alone saw over 43 lakh names removed
HARHAR campaign launch becomes a platform for religious segregation, with Rane urging Hindus to buy only from Hindus and issuing a chilling threat against Muslims attending the Kumbh Mela
The author argues that for six cogent reasons, the final, post-SIR electoral roll has ensured the deletion of not just 99.3 lakh voters as has been admitted; this includes 75 lakhs of voters in the “shifted” and “absent” category; hence 99.3 lakhs plus another possible 27 lakhs by a gross under-representation of the elector-population ratio (EPR); roughly this means that the deletions swell to an approximate 1.26 crore voter deletions in total that is a staggering 18 per cent of the state’s electorate