Published Oct 25, 2026 | 9:48 AM ⚊ Updated Oct 25, 2026 | 10:38 AM
People gathered at Hyderabad's iconic landmark Tank Bund to protest SIR and demand the resignation of CEC Gyanesh Kumar
Synopsis: Protesters demanded that the SIR be scrapped, every eligible voter dropped from the rolls be restored to the electoral lists, Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar be sacked, and the Chief Election Commissioner and Other Election Commissioners Act, 2023, which governs the appointment of election commissioners, be repealed. Economist Parakala Prabhakar urged citizens to treat every space where people question authority and dissent as a Jantar Mantar of its own.
As the sun set over Hussain Sagar in Hyderabad on Saturday, 24 October, hundreds of citizens formed a human chain along the Tank Bund, holding the tricolour and placards and raising slogans against the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls and Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar.
The gathering began at 4 pm near the statue of Makhdoom Mohiuddin, the Urdu poet and Marxist revolutionary remembered for his role in resistance against the last Nizam of the erstwhile princely state of Hyderabad.
People Against SIR, a newly formed platform of students, women, farmers, Dalit and other civil society groups, organised what was perhaps the largest demonstration against the SIR in Hyderabad so far.
A protester holds a placard reading ‘This is my Jantar Mantar’.
The protesters demanded that the SIR be scrapped, every eligible voter dropped from the rolls be restored to the electoral lists, Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar be sacked, and the Chief Election Commissioner and Other Election Commissioners Act, 2023, which governs the appointment of election commissioners, be repealed.
Economist Parakala Prabhakar was among those present. In a video message on X before the protest, he had urged citizens to treat every space where people question authority and dissent as a Jantar Mantar of its own.
Speaking to the media, Prabhakar said Saturday’s demonstration showed Hyderabad’s resolve and that the government could not stop citizens from protesting. The state might denotify Jantar Mantar, he said, but for protesters, Jantar Mantar was not a physical space.
“Wherever there is a protest, that is Jantar Mantar. Every person who is protesting is a walking Jantar Mantar. Every mind that is questioning and dissenting is Jantar Mantar. Today the country is rising. Everybody from all sections, from all walks of life, every age group, every region is rising up. We want democracy to be restored. We want integrity of our electoral process to be restored,” he said.
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Telangana has seen large-scale deletions from the draft electoral rolls published after the enumeration phase of the SIR.
Of the 3.38 crore electors on the pre-SIR rolls, 73.39 lakh, or 21.7 percent, were left out of the draft rolls and marked as absent, shifted, dead or duplicate. Notices were issued to nearly 93 lakh more electors over “logical discrepancies” in their records or because they could not be mapped to the 2002 electoral rolls.
Economist Parakala Prabhakar said Saturday’s demonstration showed Hyderabad’s resolve
Protestors said the requirement to map voters to the 2002 rolls had hit married women and the poor hardest. They alleged that the exercise had been riddled with lapses: living voters were marked dead, door-to-door verification was skipped in several places, and Muslim voters were disproportionately targeted.
They cited more than 13.4 crore deletions across the SIR exercise as evidence, in their view, that voter verification had turned into a purge. They warned that Telangana could lose nearly half its electorate.
Activist Manga, general secretary of the Progressive Organisation for Women (POW), said her name was missing from the draft rolls despite her having contested the 2023 Telangana Assembly election.
“Today we are all here to protest the unlawful removal of crores of voters from the rolls; we want them restored. If they are dead voters and Rohingyas as they claim, the process should be made transparent. Instead, they are taking away the voting rights of people who question them, people who stand up for democratic rights, students, and everyone who speaks against them,” she said.
Participants also condemned the police action against protesters in Delhi, asserting their constitutional right to peaceful protest. They raised slogans popularised during the Jantar Mantar protests, condemning Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
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Like the many Gen Z protests the country has seen so far this year, the demonstration saw an eclectic mix of slogans chanted with gusto by young and old alike. There were the straightforward ones: ‘Vote bachao desh bachao’ and ‘SIR ko radd karo’. And then there were the irreverent ones: ‘Gyanu, it’s done bro’ and ‘Chappan inch ka chota bandar bal Narendar’.
The demonstration saw a creative mix of slogans and posters.
Women protesters were at the forefront of the demonstration. ‘Gyanu, you messed with the wrong women,’ they chanted.
Pavan, a software engineer from Hyderabad, told South First that he and his friends had been actively participating in demonstrations against the SIR. He called the exercise unconstitutional.
“I feel like there is an attack on democracy in India. Starting with Gyanesh Kumar’s appointment, his decisions, and how they were implemented, it all violates our Constitution. That’s why I’m here to protest along with my friends. We say SIR is unconstitutional because of a lack of transparency. They are deleting votes but are failing to provide information on why these votes are deleted,” he said.
Women from the National Workers Welfare Trust (NWWT) and the Telangana Domestic Workers Union (TDWU) were also among the attendees. Sister Lissy Joseph, chairperson of NWWT, told South First that domestic workers had left their work behind for the evening to join the protest and fight for their rights.
Domestic workers left their work behind for the evening to join the protest.
“Domestic workers are busy working all day; they do not have time to do much else, but their votes got deleted in the name of SIR. We are here because we want our rights to be safeguarded. No one has the power to take away the rights of citizens of this country. We stand strong to fight for the rights of domestic workers and every worker in this country, and all our citizens,” Sr Lissy told South First.
As the gathering grew, traffic on the busy road leading to the Secretariat came to a near standstill. Volunteers from People Against SIR handed pamphlets to attendees and passersby, highlighting the unprecedented number of voter deletions in Telangana and across the country.
Instead of voters electing the government, the government was now choosing its voters, they told the public, urging them to join the fight.
(Edited by Dese Gowda)
