In this episode of South Central, hosts Dhanya Rajendran and Anisha Seth are joined by activist-psephologist Yogendra Yadav and former lawyer and journalist Sukanya Shaji.

They first discuss the Special Intensive Revision of voter rolls exercise and controversies surrounding it. Yogendra says the EC is “no longer acting as a neutral, constitutional body” and that many of its press conferences now come off as “PR exercises”. 

“The ECI has not learnt that a large-scale exercise like the SIR mandates the question of whether this was the right move at all,” he adds. “ECI decided that SIR is the medicine and started looking for a disease to fit that.” 

In part two of the discussion, the panel discusses two high court orders – one from Kerala, another from Karnataka. In Kerala, a Bengali woman actor had accused director Ranjith of sexual harassment; the incident took place in 2009 but she complained in 2024 in the aftermath of the Hema Committee report. In Karnataka, a woman complained of sexual assault from a man she met on a dating app. 

In both cases, the high courts quashed the FIRs, which Sukanya says is “not a good precedent”. “The court, especially in the Karnataka case, makes a blanket assumption that a woman having agency to meet a man she met online would have the agency to walk out also. But what is not factored here is how social agency does not negate gender power imbalance,” she says. 

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Audio Timecodes 

00:00:00- Introduction 

00:01:44 - CCTV Series 

00:02:47 - Headlines 

00:08:45 - Support Newslaundry 

00:09:45 - Headlines

00:15:12 - Yogendra Yadav on SIR  

00:54:55- Bumble & Ranjith Cases

01:15:38- Recommendations 

References

Vijay’s Karur visit challenges and DMK’s mixed numbers | Powertrip #123

Opinion: The SIR in Bihar was a futile bureaucratic exercise

Exclusive: Bihar SIR rolls reveal 2,92,048 voters with house number ‘0’

Second phase of SIR to begin in 12 states, including TN and Kerala

Karnataka HC quashes FIR against man accused of raping Bumble match

‘Delay in complaint’: Kerala HC quashes case by Bengali woman actor against director Ranjith

Recommendations 

Yogendra Yadav

How India Became Democratic

Sukanya Shaji 

I Who Have Never Known Men

Thotta Charithram Kettittilla

Anisha Sheth

The Cat Who Saved Books

Dhanya Rajedran

A Teen in Love With a Chatbot Killed Himself

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Produced by Bhuvan Malik, edited by Jaseem Ali, written by Sukanya Shaji. 

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