Anyone on your voter list can ask to remove your name.

Karnataka is rebuilding its voter list, name by name.

It is called the Special Intensive Revision, or SIR. Officials go house to house and check every entry on the list.

Booth Level Officers, called BLOs, visit each home. Eligible people who are missing get added. People who have died, moved away for good, or appear twice get taken off. Then a draft list is published, anyone can object to it, and a final list follows.

Another 43.8 lakh voters got notices asking them to back up their entry. More than half of those notices, 24 lakh, went to voters in Bengaluru.

In May 2026, the Supreme Court upheld the SIR as constitutional. It also said a removal from the roll is not a ruling on anyone's citizenship.

Sources: Outlook, on Karnataka's draft rolls; The Quint, on the Supreme Court's May 27, 2026 judgment; The News Minute, on the final roll date.

One form asks for a name to go. Three checks stand in its way.

Three forms do most of the work. Form 6 adds a name. Form 8 corrects one. Form 7 objects to a name and asks for it to be removed.

A Form 7 is an objection. It is not a deletion. Here is what is supposed to happen in between.

84,900 objections. Many arrived in the last three days.

Karnataka's Chief Electoral Officer says 84,900 Form 7s reached election offices during the revision.

Police complaints say many were filed in bulk between September 21 and 24, the final days before the window closed. By early October, police had registered FIRs in at least five districts. Here is what four of them allege, by the number of voters each set of forms targeted.

In Mysuru, a family that says it has lived at one address for years found Form 7s claiming it had moved. 28 other voters are on the same complaint. In Vijayapura, after a local MLA said the rolls carried names of missing people, eight voters went to the Deputy Commissioner's office in person to say they are alive and living where the roll says they live.

Sources: The News Minute and The South First, Oct 3 to 4, 2026; Outlook, Oct 5, 2026; The Federal, Oct 4, 2026.

Is filing a Form 7 a crime?

No. Both sides agree on that much. The fight is over what makes a form false, and who should have caught it.

Karnataka has seen this before. In 2023, thousands of voters in Aland, Kalaburagi were targeted with deletion requests that state investigators reportedly found to be mostly bogus. The deletions were halted after the local MLA raised the alarm.

Sources: The News Minute, Oct 3, 2026; The South First, Oct 4, 2026; Madhyamam, on the Aland investigation, Oct 2025.

Then the story went national

Two commissioners put 14 objections on record.

On September 23, The Indian Express reported that two of India's three Election Commissioners had objected in writing at least 14 times in 10 months.

The two are Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi. Some notes said decisions were taken, and orders issued, in the Commission's name without their knowledge. Here is what the reported notes were about.

Three commissioners. Any two decide.

The Election Commission is not one person. It is a body of three, meant to decide together. Where they cannot agree, the majority wins. Former Chief Election Commissioner OP Rawat pointed out that a two-member majority legally prevails over the Chief.

One detail tilts the room. The Chief can be removed only the way a Supreme Court judge is, by Parliament. The other two can be removed on the Chief's recommendation.

The Commission's answer

Written notes and differing views are a normal part of how a multi-member body works, it says, and every decision of the full Commission in the past year was unanimous. On September 26, all three commissioners met. The Commission then said the order that started the SIR in June 2025 had all three behind it.

Its statement did not deny the specific events the report described. The Indian Express has not retracted its report. A viral message claiming it had was checked by The Quint and found to be false.

Sources: Newslaundry, Sept 23, 2026; Outlook, Sept 26, 2026; The News Minute; The Quint WebQoof; Constitution of India, Article 324(5).

From a newspaper report to Freedom Park in sixteen days.

1. SEP 23

   The Indian Express report. BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra calls the dissent a sign of a vibrant democracy, and the calls for resignation a smear campaign.

2. SEP 25

   Congress marches to state election offices across India. It demands the Chief's removal and an independent review of voter list changes.

3. SEP 26

   The three commissioners meet. The Commission says the new Form 6 declaration was upheld by the Supreme Court.

4. OCT 2

   11 metro stations around Jantar Mantar are shut, and police put protesters on buses. More than 500 were reportedly detained. A rally gathers at Mumbai's Shivaji Park.

5. OCT 5

   The Supreme Court refuses to suspend the Chief on a newspaper report alone, and issues notice to the Commission and all three commissioners. The Chief Justice says the court never approved a modified Form 6.

6. OCT 6, 7

   Rahul Gandhi, Priyanka Gandhi and opposition MPs are detained three times in two days on the way to Jantar Mantar.

7. OCT 8

   Freedom Park, Bengaluru. YouTuber Dhruv Rathee, at his first protest, says he is not there for regime change, and asks BJP voters to care because the vote belongs to everyone. A people's tribunal led by a former judge hears voters who say they were wrongly removed or marked dead.

8. OCT 10

   A "Chalo Delhi" protest is planned at Jantar Mantar.

On the streets: opposition parties, student unions, and the Cockroach Janta Party, a youth movement that began online in May 2026. The government and the Commission say the revision has no political motive, and exists to remove duplicate and ineligible entries while keeping every eligible voter.

Sources: Khaleej Times, Sept 24; Al Jazeera, Sept 25, Oct 2 and Oct 7; Outlook, Sept 26; LiveLaw and The South First, Oct 5; The Week, Oct 8, 2026.

The law under the story

Who picks the referee?

Election Commissioners decide how India votes. So who decides the Election Commissioners? The answer has changed twice in three years.

Supporters of the 2023 Act say Parliament did exactly what the Court asked it to do, and that the Chief Justice's seat was always meant to be temporary. Critics say a minister picked by the Prime Minister is unlikely to vote against him, which makes the Leader of the Opposition a minority of one.

Sources: Supreme Court Observer, case page on the 2023 Act; PW Only IAS, on the Act's provisions; Constitution of India, Article 324(2).

All three commissioners today were chosen under the 2023 law.

Twice the Leader of the Opposition dissented. Twice the panel went ahead.

And yet the two commissioners now objecting on record came through the same process. A selection law shapes who gets in. It cannot fully decide what they do once they are there.

Sources: Deccan Chronicle, Feb 18, 2025; Supreme Court Observer; Khaleej Times.

Three ways to check a commissioner. Here is where each stands.

The shield, in one line

Section 16 of the 2023 Act says no court can take up a civil or criminal case against a serving or former commissioner for anything done in the role. Supporters say it protects commissioners from a flood of lawsuits during elections. The NGO Lok Prahari, which is challenging it, says it goes further than the protection judges get. The case has been listed seven times since January. The petitioner says neither the Centre nor the Commission has filed a reply yet.

Sources: Onmanorama, Apr 7, 2026; ThePrint, Oct 7, 2026; LiveLaw, Oct 5, 2026; PW Only IAS, on Section 16.

The Supreme Court split on the 2023 law. On the same day as the report.

On September 23, two judges ruled on whether the challenge to the Act needed a larger bench. They disagreed.

They agreed on what happens next. The papers went to the Chief Justice to set up a Constitution Bench. Until that bench rules, the 2023 Act stands, and the panel it created picks the next commissioner.

The Chief Justice had already stepped away from this case in March. A case about whether the Chief Justice should sit on the panel, he said, was a conflict of interest for him.

Sources: The Morung Express and Moneylife, Sept 23, 2026; Verdictum, Mar 20, 2026; Supreme Court Observer.

A resignation changes one name. The law picks the next one.

The street wants Gyanesh Kumar out. Whatever happens to that demand, the next Chief Election Commissioner will be chosen by the same panel, under the same Act.

Three decisions will matter more than any resignation.

1. The Constitution Bench on the 2023 Act.It decides who picks the referee.
2. The Supreme Court on the 14 decisions.It decides whether the Commission acts as three, or as one.
3. The Karnataka FIRs.They decide whether a false Form 7 costs anything.

This is not ruling party against opposition. Every party's voters are on the same list.