Yes, the unimaginable happened. On October 23, Parakala Prabhakar — economist, author of ‘The Crooked Timber of New India’ , and husband of Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman joined mass protests against the Election Commission's Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls.
The protest was not just one party. It was called by People Against SIR alliance, formed Oct 14 by 200+ groups of farmers, students, workers, Dalits, Adivasis, minorities, women. The lead organiser on ground is the Cockroach Janata Party / Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) founded by activist Abhijeet Dipke — a youth-led collective known for school education protests and now viral as the "cockroach movement" because its symbol is cockroach as resilient survivor.
Prabhakar shared stage in Hyderabad human-chain at Tank Bund and earlier announced on X: “Har gali mein Jantar Mantar! Friday, 23 October 2026. People’s march to restore democracy. Let’s rise to the challenge.”
His charge: SIR is a “bloodless political genocide of citizenship”, alleging deletion of names from rolls is depriving eligible citizens of voting rights and creating two categories of citizens. The alliance claims roughly 13 crore voters deleted, especially marginalised.
Others on platform included actor Prakash Raj, senior advocate Prashant Bhushan, farmer leader Rakesh Tikait, AISA president Neha Bora, author Tushar Gandhi, SFI leader Aishe Ghosh.
Four demands were listed:
1. Scrap SIR and restore deleted voters.
2. Removal and prosecution of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar.
3. Repeal 2023 Election Commissioners Act amendment.
4. Return to paper ballots and unbiased EC appointment.
Prabhakar in Hyderabad said: “This shows resolve of Hyderabad and that we are against the shenanigans of the Election Commissioner. We want SIR to be scrapped. We want EC to be dissolved.” He also said every protest site will become Jantar Mantar after Delhi Police denotified Jantar Mantar.
The government and EC have not agreed to scrap SIR. The EC extended deadlines on Oct 30 for Delhi and five other states, saying process is to clean rolls of bogus and dead voters.
For Indian politics, optics are striking: husband of one of Modi government’s most powerful ministers — who has long been a vocal critic of Modi’s economic record on unemployment, demonetisation, savings — joining an Opposition-aligned civil society march demanding CEC resignation. Internet reaction was “How does a marriage like this work?” but Prabhakar and Sitharaman have publicly maintained independent political views for years.
*Tags:* #ParakalaPrabhakar #NirmalaSitharaman #SIR #VoterList #EC #GyaneshKumar #CockroachJantaParty #AbhijeetDipke #PeopleAgainstSIR #Democracy