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Hyderabad protesters on Tank Bund demand SIR rollback and CEC Gyanesh Kumar's exit

Economist Parakala Prabhakar, Prof Haragopal and MLC Kodandram joined students and civil society groups by Hussain Sagar. Organisers said police stopped them from forming a human chain along the bund.

From the editorial desk · HyderabadPublished
Economist Parakala Prabhakar and Tank Bund in Hyderabad (file photos)
Economist Parakala Prabhakar and Tank Bund in Hyderabad (file photos)Photos: Sravanikotha / Wikimedia Commons; Bhavss1214 / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

Key points

  1. The People Against SIR coalition rallied on Tank Bund on Saturday, carrying the tricolour.
  2. Parakala Prabhakar called for the Election Commission to be disbanded and rebuilt.
  3. Organisers said police restricted their plan for a human chain along the bund.

Hyderabad’s Tank Bund, the road that runs along Hussain Sagar lake, became a protest ground on Saturday as students and civil society groups demanded that the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls be scrapped and that Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar resign.

Waving the tricolour, protesters shouted slogans against the SIR, the CEC, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah. The rally was organised by People Against SIR, a coalition of civil society and student organisations, together with the Students’ Federation of India (SFI), the National Alliance of People’s Movements (NAPM), the PDSU and several other groups.

Among those who joined were Prof Haragopal, economist Parakala Prabhakar, MLC Kodandram and retired IAS officer Akunuri Murali.

‘Disband the Election Commission’

Prabhakar, who is married to Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, went furthest in his demands. He wanted the SIR scrapped, eligible voters restored to the rolls and the Election Commission disbanded, with commissioners chosen afresh by a committee of the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition and the Chief Justice of India.

Speaking to reporters, he said the government had denotified Jantar Mantar in Delhi as a protest site, and linked that to the revision. “Are you trying to denotify every town in this country. Are you trying to denotify every person in the country,” he said.

A human chain that never formed

Kiran Vissa of the NAPM said the organisers had planned to hold the protest along the whole length of Tank Bund and to form a human chain, but police restricted them.

Vissa said the current SIR should be rolled back and the exercise restarted under the 2002 manual. He also wants Kumar to resign and the Chief Election Commissioner and Other Election Commissioners Act, 2023 repealed. Under that law, he said, Modi and Shah together can appoint election commissioners, a role in which the Chief Justice once had a say. He accused the Commission of working as an extension of the BJP.

There was no immediate response from the Election Commission or the BJP to the protesters’ charges.

Part of a wider campaign

The Hyderabad rally came a day after police in Delhi detained marchers from the same People Against SIR banner as they tried to reach the Election Commission’s headquarters. Opposition parties and student groups have held a string of protests in the capital and elsewhere against the revision and against Kumar, and the Congress has a rally planned at Delhi’s Ramlila Maidan on 1 November.