Karnataka voter finds his name listed as dead, navigates bureaucratic maze to correct roll
Donald Joseph Rego, a 61-year-old from Mangaluru South, discovered his name marked as dead in Karnataka’s draft voter roll and struggled through multiple offices before the error was fixed.
Karnataka’s ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) has sent discrepancy notices to more than 4.3 million voters, and the process is now in the claims and objections phase. Donald Joseph Rego, 61, from the Bejai area of Mangaluru South, found his name absent from the draft roll and incorrectly listed under the “dead” category of the ASDDO list. He was repeatedly redirected—from the assistant electoral officer to the booth-level officer and then to a data-entry operator—before the mistake was finally rectified, resulting in a revised document and pending voter ID.
Hearings across the state, running from early September to the 23rd, have exposed a range of issues, including age-gap flags, missing certificates, and persistent technical errors on platforms such as Atal Seva Sindhu and Bengaluru One. Voters like Nagaraju Shivappa have faced additional obstacles obtaining required documents, while journalists Rohini Mohan and Samar Halarnkar reported unexpected flags on their records. The rollout also affects coastal districts and migrants abroad, highlighting systemic challenges in updating electoral data.
