DMK president M K Stalin on Wednesday, October 28, urged President Droupadi Murmu to initiate steps to remove Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar from office, scrap the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls and restore ballot-paper voting, according to a report of his memorandum and his post on X.

Source: Rise Celestial Studios (Tamil Nadu News)

Stalin, a former Tamil Nadu chief minister, also urged the President to seek the Supreme Court's opinion under Article 143 of the Constitution on the legality of deleting 97,37,832 names from Tamil Nadu's draft electoral rolls during the revision exercise. Sharing details of his appeal on X, he said the issues raised were, in his words, not mere questions but allegations that shake the foundations of democracy.

In his memorandum, Stalin raised three questions: why 97 lakh voters are missing from the electoral rolls, whether the deletion of voters changed election results, and where the Election Commission's credibility stands. He was quoted as saying: "The right to vote is not a privilege; it is a right guaranteed by the Constitution! Every vote must be counted. Every voter's right must be protected." Those are Stalin's stated positions and demands; the President's response was not reported in the coverage.

The deletions figure comes from the revision exercise itself. Tamil Nadu Chief Electoral Officer Archana Patnaik had earlier said the draft roll after SIR contained 5,43,76,755 voters, compared with around 6.41 crore registered voters before the exercise, and that 97,37,832 names had been deleted, the Times of India reported. According to that account, the deletions included 26.94 lakh voters recorded as deceased, 66.44 lakh recorded as permanently shifted or migrated, and 3,39,278 duplicate entries.

Source: Times of India via CurrentIndia

The DMK has sustained its opposition to SIR, alleging that genuine voters were excluded from the rolls — an allegation the party has also taken up politically and legally. Election authorities, in the figures reported above, have presented the deletions as the outcome of door-to-door verification and roll cleaning. Awaaz Punjab is presenting both positions as stated by each side; whether any deletion was wrongful is a matter for the authorities and the courts to determine.