Bengaluru, 12 September

Actor Prakash Raj on Saturday announced a campaign across 10 districts in Karnataka from 20 to 30 September to conduct a "social audit" of the SIR of electoral rolls.

Raj said he, along with some civil society groups, would visit different districts and polling booths to compare the names in the Election Commission's records with those deleted from the electoral rolls.

"Now, when the final roll came, what we were worried about and what we were speculating became true," he told reporters here.

Raj alleged that the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise was carried out within a short time frame despite concerns that it would be difficult to cover an electorate of more than 5 crore people.

“Give notices for six months,” he added.  “Give them a chance. Notices have been sent two days before, one day before. In the notices, they ask for two documents. When you go, you have been tortured for six documents, seven documents.”

He cited the case of Chief Minister DK Shivakumar’s mother Gowramma, who had also allegedly received a notice due to discrepancies in mapping. 

He alleged that a lot of the discrepancies were due to mismatches between spellings in English and Kannada. 

He said teams would visit different booths and collecting evidence from people whose names had allegedly been deleted.

"We will meet the victims, and every district will have a press meet where the victims will speak," he said.

Raj said civil society groups from different states would also bring their evidence and that a gathering would be held in Delhi on 1 or 2 October.

"By 15 October, we will approach different courts with the evidence," he said.

"The writing on the wall is very clear: this is a conspiracy. This is an effort to put people in trauma, and no government or Constitution allows this. You have no right to delete," the actor said.

He cited the case of a woman named Chennamma in Mandya, saying she was born before Independence and had voted in 36 elections but now had to prove her eligibility.

"Where will she get the documents? Why are you doing this? What is your intention," he asked.