Members of various organisations taking part in a meeting against ECI SIR at the Kannada Bhavan in Belagavi on Monday.
| Photo Credit: SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
The anti-SIR forum organised a protest rally in Belagavi on Monday against the Election Commission of India’s Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls.Leaders of various religious organisations, political parties and farmers associations joined the rally.The protest rally began from the Sangolli Rayanna Circle in Yaragatti on the Bagalkot highway in the morning. The protestors gathered at the Rani Channamma Circle and raised slogans against the Union government for conspiring to snatch away the voting rights of the common man.“One of the biggest contributions of B.R. Ambedkar to this country is the principle of One Person, One Vote. But the BJP is conspiring to snatch it. If it succeeds, democracy will lose its basic characteristic of universal suffrage. It will become an electoral democracy run by a few,” Writer Yallappa Himmadi said.He urged all citizens to join the protest.Activist Isabella Xavier said that the whole process of SIR is shrouded in mystery. “The ECI does not seem to have a standard set of rules. It is introducing new rules in every State. In some States, they are asking for property documents and in others, proof of voting in 2002. Due to the unreasonable demands made by ECI officers, names of several poor, labour, minorities and members of deprived communities have been deleted. What is most unfortunate is that more than half of the deleted names are of women who have voted all their lives,” she said.
