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Prakash Raj, Dhruv Rathee lead Bengaluru SIR protest as CJP demands CEC’s resignation

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Actor-activist Prakash Raj and YouTuber Dhruv Rathee joined thousands of protesters at Bengaluru’s Freedom Park on Thursday in a widening campaign against the Election Commission’s Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls, with demonstrators demanding that Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar resign and the SIR exercise be scrapped.

The protest, organised by the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), civil-society groups and the anti-SIR alliance, turned Freedom Park into a platform for people who claimed their names had been deleted, marked as shifted or otherwise affected during the revision. Protesters carried placards reading “Error 404 – Name Not Found”, “Vote theft” and “Don’t erase us, hear us”, while speakers accused the Election Commission of a lack of transparency.

The allegations have not been established as fact. The Election Commission has defended SIR as an exercise intended to identify and remove duplicate, dead, shifted and otherwise ineligible entries from electoral rolls. The BJP and the Election Commission have rejected opposition allegations that the revision is designed to manipulate elections or selectively disenfranchise voters.

The Bengaluru mobilisation comes as the SIR controversy moves beyond political parties and into street protests involving student groups, activists and public figures. It also follows opposition protests in New Delhi and other parts of the country demanding Kumar’s resignation.

Karnataka rolls lose more than 1 crore names in draft revision

The scale of the electoral-roll exercise explains why SIR has become a major political flashpoint in Karnataka.

According to data from the Karnataka Chief Electoral Officer’s office reported by The New Indian Express, the state had 5,54,32,314 registered electors as of June 16, 2026. The draft electoral roll published after the SIR exercise contained 4,46,80,151 electors as of August 24 — a reduction of 1,07,96,339 names.

The Election Commission’s categorisation of those entries is central to the dispute.

Of the 1.08 crore names not carried into the draft roll, 65,45,679 were categorised as dead, 15,17,042 as permanently shifted, 7,09,870 as duplicates and 3,83,884 under “others”. The largest category, according to the data, comprised 1,07,96,339 voters listed as absent from the addresses recorded in the electoral database.

The figures have become a focal point for critics of SIR, who argue that genuine voters could be caught in the process, particularly people who have moved, lack documentation or live in vulnerable communities.

The Election Commission, however, has ordered a verification and enrolment exercise after the revision. Booth Level Officers have been instructed to identify voters missing from the current roll, visit their homes, establish their status and facilitate re-enrolment through Form 6 where appropriate. Political parties’ Booth Level Agents are also to receive lists for verification.

A special enrolment drive in Karnataka is scheduled to begin after October 27, following publication of the final electoral roll, according to the state election authorities. Officials have also been directed to organise special camps for people living in night shelters, labour colonies and other marginalised communities.

That process has done little to cool the political confrontation.

Rathee, Prakash Raj sharpen attack on Election Commission

Rathee, making his first public protest appearance in India, used the Bengaluru platform to appeal directly to voters who support the BJP, arguing that the controversy should not be viewed simply through party lines.

“I don’t want regime change, and I am not funded by Musk or Soros. I came with my own money,” Rathee said, referring to claims about his involvement in Indian political activism.

He said the issue concerned every voter, irrespective of political affiliation, and accused the Election Commission of what he described as “zero transparency and accountability”.

Rathee alleged that civil-society groups had documented cases in Karnataka where people were listed as dead despite being alive. He used such cases to question the procedures through which names are being removed from electoral rolls.

“These are not BJP voters or Congress voters,” he said, arguing that the right to vote should not depend on political allegiance.

He also demanded Kumar’s resignation.

Prakash Raj, addressing the gathering in Kannada, similarly argued that SIR was about more than individual names disappearing from voter lists.

“Who are they to take away our votes?” Raj said, framing the controversy as an issue of voting rights and citizens’ dignity.

CJP founder Abhijeet Dipke accused the Election Commission of carrying out voter deletions at the direction of the BJP-led government. Those allegations were part of the protesters’ political argument and have not been independently established. The BJP and Election Commission have rejected claims of manipulation.

The CJP has demanded that Kumar step down and that SIR be withdrawn.

The protest was structured as a “People’s Tribunal”, with organisers bringing people from several Karnataka districts to present accounts of problems they said they encountered during the electoral-roll revision. Speakers said participants came from areas including Vijayapura, Bhalki, Babaleshwar, Kodagu and Chitradurga.

The tribunal also featured former judge Gopal Gowda, journalist Vijayamma and retired bureaucrat Ibrahim, who heard testimonies presented by the organisers.

The event later expanded into demands for broader institutional accountability, with speakers invoking the Constitution, voting rights and the independence of electoral institutions.

Protest movement heads towards Delhi

The Bengaluru demonstration is part of a rapidly expanding national campaign.

The CJP and opposition groups have held protests in multiple locations, while Congress and other opposition parties have separately targeted the Election Commission over SIR. The demonstrations intensified after Rahul Gandhi was briefly detained during a protest in New Delhi on Wednesday, according to the Associated Press.

The CJP has announced another major demonstration at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar on October 10, with student organisations expected to participate.

For the Election Commission, the immediate challenge is to complete the revision while demonstrating that genuine voters have effective avenues to challenge deletions.

For the protesters, however, the issue has already moved beyond the mechanics of electoral-roll revision. Their central argument is that no eligible citizen should lose voting rights because of an opaque or difficult verification process.

The final electoral roll in Karnataka, expected after October 27, could therefore become the next major point of political scrutiny.

Until then, the competing narratives remain sharply divided: protesters describe SIR as a threat to voting rights and democratic participation, while election authorities maintain that the exercise is intended to clean up electoral rolls and provide mechanisms for genuine voters to be restored.

Priyanka Chopra Faces Online Scrutiny Over Oscars Moment After Javier Bardem’s Statement

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Priyanka Chopra Jonas returned to the Academy Awards stage for the first time in a decade on Sunday, only to find herself at the center of a social media debate, not for anything she said, but for how she appeared to react when her co-presenter said it.

At the 98th Academy Awards, Priyanka Chopra Jonas took the stage alongside Spanish actor Javier Bardem to present the Best International Feature Film award, which went to Norway’s Sentimental Value, directed by Joachim Trier. Before announcing the nominees, Bardem said, “No to war and Free Palestine,” while wearing a “No to War” pin on his tuxedo. His statement drew loud applause from inside the Dolby Theatre. Chopra Jonas stood beside him, nodded, and proceeded with the presentation. She has not publicly commented on the moment.

Clips of the exchange circulated rapidly across platforms, with users fixating on Priyanka Chopra Jonas’ expression during Bardem’s remarks. Interpretations ranged widely — some read discomfort into her body language, others pushed back against that characterization entirely. The disagreement itself became the story.

Indian content creator and political commentator Dhruv Rathee escalated the conversation days later when he posted a video on Instagram publicly criticizing Chopra Jonas, accusing her of maintaining “privileged neutrality” and suggesting that Bollywood figures are broadly reluctant to take moral stands on international human rights issues. Rathee also directed criticism at the wider Bollywood community, contrasting Indian celebrities with Hollywood stars who have more openly addressed the Gaza conflict. As of the time of publication, neither Chopra Jonas nor her representatives had issued a public response.

Attends Major Hollywood Events

The controversy arrived at a moment otherwise meant to mark a career milestone. Her 2026 appearance was her first time presenting at the Oscars since 2016, when she shared the stage with Liev Schreiber to present the Best Film Editing award. Over the years, Priyanka  Chopra Jonas has established herself as one of the few Indian actors with a consistent presence at major Hollywood industry events. On the professional front, she was most recently seen in The Bluff, currently streaming on Prime Video, and is attached to SS Rajamouli’s upcoming production Varanasi, opposite Mahesh Babu.

The evening brought a separate wave of headlines as well. Reports emerged that Priyanka  Chopra Jonas and husband Nick Jonas were forced to switch to a golf cart after their vehicle was denied clearance near the venue, and that the cart nearly tipped over on a sharp corner while they were en route to make her presentation slot on time.

A separate controversy resurfaced in the days following the ceremony when a 2017 video began recirculating online appearing to show the same two individuals approaching Priyanka  Chopra Jonas for autographs on two separate occasions at LAX, prompting accusations that the encounters were staged for publicity. Neither Chopra Jonas nor her team addressed the claim.

Further noise was added when a fabricated tweet, falsely attributed to Indian actress Swara Bhasker, began spreading in connection with the Oscars moment. Bhasker denied authorship of the post on X, calling it fake and attributing it to politically motivated bad actors.

The backlash directed at Priyanka Chopra Jonas reflects a recurring tension in global celebrity culture, the expectation that high-profile figures take explicit positions on geopolitical conflicts, weighed against the professional and personal consequences of doing so. For South Asian stars navigating both Bollywood and Hollywood simultaneously, that calculus is often more complicated than the discourse around it tends to acknowledge.