The passport renewal of the former editor of The Telegraph, R Rajagopal, has been put on hold after his name was found missing from the voter list in Kolkata
NEW DELHI — The Editors Guild of India has condemned the denial of voting and passport rights to R. Rajagopal, former editor of The Telegraph.
In a statement on Sunday, the Guild said Rajagopal’s case “highlights the misery that millions of Indians are being put through” due to the controversial Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the voters’ list.
Rajagopal’s passport renewal has been put on hold after his name was found missing from the voter list in Kolkata’s Ballygunge constituency in March this year. He is reportedly among nearly 27 lakh voters whose names have been struck off from the rolls.
In an editorial for The Wire, Rajagopal said he was “taken aback” when his name was removed during the SIR exercise. Election officers, he wrote, could not trace either his or his father’s names in the 2002 voters’ list.
The SIR is being conducted by the Election Commission of India (ECI) to identify ineligible voters. Critics allege the process has wrongly removed millions of eligible voters — a charge the ECI rejects.
The Editors Guild, founded in 1978 by Kuldip Nayar to protect press freedom and uphold editorial standards, warned that if a prominent public figure like Rajagopal could be stripped of his voting rights, “the plight of ordinary Indians was likely to be far worse.”
The ECI has not publicly responded to the specific allegations concerning Rajagopal.
Around nine million of the deleted voters were in West Bengal. Rajagopal is among the thousands who have challenged the decision in court.
Another phase of the SIR is underway in 16 states and three Union Territories. The process verifies current voter records against the 2002 electoral rolls — the last nationwide revision of its kind.
Rajagopal wrote that his name had been removed despite him being a registered voter since 2010 and serving as editor of the Kolkata-based The Telegraphfor seven years.
“No reason was furnished for my exclusion [from the voters’ list] even after I submitted my matriculation certificate. My appeal is now pending before one of the tribunals constituted pursuant to the Supreme Court’s directions,” he wrote.
He said authorities later told him that police verification for his passport renewal could not be completed because his name had been removed from the electoral roll.
“I was puzzled because I could not find any public document that listed the voter identity card as a mandatory document for passport renewal,” he added.
