Bengaluru: The ‘People Against SIR’ forum on Wednesday urged the state government to “reject” the final electoral rolls prepared through SIR and insisted on holding the local body elections as per the earlier rolls.

Addressing a press conference, activist Noor Sridhar challenged Chief Electoral Officer – Karnataka V Anbukkumar’s claim that “not a single voter had been deleted wrongfully.”

“Anbukkumar says not even one eligible voter has been deleted. We challenge him that we can bring 100 people who were deleted. If he accepts this challenge and we bring 100 such people, he should resign.”

As per the final electoral list released on Tuesday at the end of the SIR in Karnataka, there are 4.55 crore voters in Karnataka. This is 99.32 lakh lesser than the pre-SIR figure of 5.54 crore voters in the electoral list.

Noting that there were 5.2 crore adults in Karnataka as per government estimates, Sridhar came down hard on the figure of 4.55 crore voters.

Sridhar explained that the total number of voters in Bengaluru had reduced from 1.03 crore to 59 lakh. He wondered how this figure was possible, since Bengaluru was a constantly growing city.

Pointing out that only 716 foreign nationals were found to have been removed from the voters list, he slammed the exercise as one that didn’t yield substantive results.

He sought a social audit through public hearing, booth-level programmes and house-to-house visits to identify eligible voters. Sridhar said the issue would be taken up prominently during the Winter Session of the Legislature that is expected to begin on December 07.

Senior journalist Indhudhara Honnapura slammed the process through which Gyanesh Kumar was elected as Chief Election Commissioner as “illegal,” where two of the three members supposed to elect the CEC were from the ruling party (PM Narendra Modi and HM Amit Shah).

Claiming that several eligible voters had been deleted, Honnapura sought Gyanesh Kumar’s arrest.