Published Oct 08, 2026 | 4:19 PM ⚊ Updated Oct 08, 2026 | 4:19 PM
YouTuber Dhruv Rathee, CJP founder Abhijeet Dipke and writer Devanuru Mahadeva, among others, joined Raj at the protest, alongside scores of students.
Synopsis: Prakash Raj said voters were being forced to “beg” to retain their right to vote because of the Election Commission’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, and demanded criminal action against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar and cancellation of the exercise. Raj was speaking at a massive demonstration led by the Cockroach Janta Party demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, at Freedom Park in Bengaluru. CJP founder Abhijeet Dipke accused the Election Commission and the Narendra Modi government of ‘murdering’ democracy.
National Film Award-winning actor and activist Prakash Raj on Thursday, 8 October said voters were being forced to “beg” to retain their right to vote because of the Election Commission’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, and demanded criminal action against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar and cancellation of the contentious exercise.
He was speaking at a massive demonstration led by the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), which saw participation from a coalition of progressive groups and civil society organisations demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, at Freedom Park in Bengaluru.
YouTuber Dhruv Rathee, CJP founder Abhijeet Dipke and writer Devanuru Mahadeva, among others, joined Raj at the protest, alongside scores of students, youth and civil society members.
Addressing the crowd, Raj said citizens would not allow anyone to take away their votes.
“Every five years, these politicians come to our feet. They call us brothers and sisters, seek our blessings, touch our feet and ask us to vote for them. But now what are they doing? We have to stand outside their offices and beg, ‘Sir, please give us our votes back.’ Are we going to allow this? Who are they to take away our votes?” he said to raucous chants of “Vote chor, gaddi chor” (vote thief, leave the chair).
“We should decide who comes to power in this country. But now they want to decide who gets to vote.”
The ECI has deleted over 13 crore names from the electoral rolls since the SIR process began in mid-2025. Raj said the SIR was disproportionately leaving vulnerable communities without the franchise.
“Don’t think that just because your vote is there today, you are safe. They have removed the votes of Adivasis, the poor, Muslims and minorities. They cannot kill democracy directly, so they are taking away people’s votes. Thirteen crore votes is not just a number. These are human beings. These are citizens of this country,” he said.
“Our activists went across Karnataka and met people who actually lost their votes, people who suffered because of SIR. These are stories of tears. These are people like us,” he said.
Raj said volunteers had gone “house to house, booth to booth, village to village,” working day and night to collect data that laid the foundation for the movement.
“Political parties are fighting their battles. But we are not a political party. We are citizens. We are the citizens of this country. This fight is for our rights,” Raj said.
He said the problem would not go away simply with the removal of the CEC and called for the cancellation of the entire exercise.
“Even if Gyanesh Kumar goes, another Gyanesh Kumar will come. First, SIR must be cancelled. Then this Gyanesh Kumar must be investigated. A case must be filed against him. Whose instructions was he following? Amit Shah? Modi?” he said.
“The Election Commission has not come to clean up the voter list. They have come to remove people. They have come to remove us. Do you understand how dangerous this is?”
The actor said the protests would continue until the demands were met.
“Young people, today’s protest is only a sample. Just a sample. Until they cancel SIR, until they give back our dignity and our rights, this fight must continue. We must come onto the streets. We must fight peacefully,” he said.
“If you just keep shouting, they will say some youngsters came and made noise. No. We are serious. We have anger inside us. We have pain inside us. We must tell the country through the media how angry and hurt we are.”
Also Read: ‘Watchdogs, not lapdogs’: Dhruv Rathee, Parakala Prabhakar join anti-SIR stir in Bengaluru
CJP founder Abhijeet Dipke was joined on stage by a few of the voters whose names had been wrongfully deleted from the rolls on the grounds that they were dead, and accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of murdering democracy.
“I will speak in Hindi for a moment because I want the Prime Minister of the country, the vote thief—the vote thief—to look at these faces. Narendra Modi. Votes were deleted, and a Prime Minister was made by stealing votes. These people had been declared dead—dead. Their votes were deleted,” he said.
“These people are standing here alive. So the death that has occurred is not the death of these people. The death that has occurred is the death of the democracy of this country. It is the democracy of India that has died, not these people, because these people are standing here alive. And the murderer of democracy is Narendra Modi. Modi is the murderer of democracy. Look at these people. They are alive! And yet the Election Commission, Gyanesh Kumar, under the instructions of Narendra Modi and Amit Shah, has deleted their votes.”
Dipke noted that such deletions had been reported across the country and said it was a deliberate effort to disenfranchise voters.
“And this is not happening only here. This is happening across India. Why is this happening? Because they need ownership over you. It is the RSS mentality that does not believe in an inclusive India, that does not believe in the ideology of Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar, that does not believe in the ideology of Periyar. It only believes in the ideology of Nathuram Godse, who killed Mahatma Gandhi,” he said.
“And we have to fight against that ideology to save our democracy, to save our country.”
(Edited by Dese Gowda)
