Email: sabrangind@gmail.com
Author: shivasundar
Need for Clarity on the SIR: An Open Letter to the Congress Leaders of Karnataka
While the national leadership of the party, leads and articulates the national campaign for the scrapping of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) process, the state leadership of Karnataka, a state governed by the party, gives conflicting statements almost endorsing a process that has disenfranchised close to 10 million there
Karnataka’s new PRC rules are people-friendly, but will the ECI accept them?
While a sustained and rigorous campaign by anti-SIR activists across Karnataka has pushed the opposition Congress government to issue a fresh set of simplified guidelines for the issuance of Permanent Residency Certificates; the experience of West Bengal however shows that no amount of pro-activeness by any state government influences an ECI functioning under a non-transparent and non-accountable diktat
To Karnataka’s Anti-SIR Movement: A note of caution and concern
While efforts have been afoot in Karnataka, Maharashtra, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh by civil rights groups and people’s movements to ensure inclusion of the maximum number of eligible voters under the ongoing, expanded, SIR process. The author argues how these efforts may come to naught, given the structural issues involved: a compromised ECI, rushed timelines and the unlawful and rigid document-test for citizenship. In fact, robust efforts in Kerala, West Bengal and Tamil Nadu where similar efforts were made also came to naught.