Public movement needed against SIR: Shivasundar
Bengaluru: Columnist and activist Shivasundar has called for the formation of a public movement against the Special Intensive Revision of the Electoral Roll (SIR) being carried out by the Election Commission of India in 12 states. Karnataka is also expected to begin the SIR process by February next year, he warned.
Speaking as the chief guest at a special discussion on SIR organised by the Muslim Muttahida Mahaz at the BIFT auditorium in Darussalam building, Queens Road, Bengaluru, on Saturday, Shivasundar said that preparations must begin immediately to resist what he termed a potentially harmful exercise.
He stated that the coming three months are crucial for ground-level mobilisation: adding names to the voter list, ensuring documents are in order, creating public awareness against SIR, and being ready for protests if required.
Referring to Bihar, he said that when SIR was implemented there, Aadhaar was initially not accepted as a valid identity document, which would have resulted in nearly two crore people losing their voting rights. It was only due to street protests that the Supreme Court intervened and directed the Election Commission to accept Aadhaar, he added.
As a result, among 65 lakh voters whose names were removed, 35 lakh were able to vote again because Aadhaar was recognised. “This is the strength of public struggle — it influences the judiciary,” Shivasundar asserted.
He pointed to previous mass movements, including nationwide protests against CAA, NRC and NPR, the farmers’ movement, and demonstrations across Karnataka after the Mangaluru police firing, saying that several states later passed resolutions due to public pressure.
Shivasundar stressed that voter records must be corrected at the booth level. He alleged that in Madhya Pradesh, RSS workers are assisting Booth Level Officers (BLOs) in deciding whose names are included or deleted from the electoral rolls. “Here, even if we ask Congress workers to help, they say there is no cadre,” he remarked.
He urged that in addition to the 11 documents listed by the Election Commission, available IDs such as Aadhaar, bank passbooks, NREGA cards and ration cards should also be accepted.
The programme was attended by advocate Vinay Sreenivasa, Muslim Muttahida Mahaz convener Masood Abdul Khader, Jamaat-e-Islami Hind state president Dr Muhammad Saad Belagami, secretary Maulana Yusuf Kanni, Maulana Ejaz Ahmed Nadvi, Maulana Zulfikar Noori and others.
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Ambani, Adani pledge USD 210 bn for India's AI push
New Delhi (PTI): Conglomerates run by billionaires Mukesh Ambani and Gautam Adani committed USD 210 billion investment to creating infrastructure that will help India emerge as an AI development hub.
At the India AI Impact Summit, Ambani announced a Rs 10 lakh crore (about USD 110 billion) investment in artificial intelligence over the next seven years in gigawatt-scale AI-ready data centres in Jamnagar, leveraging up to 10 GW of green power surplus, and a nationwide edge-compute layer integrated with telecom and digital operator Jio's networks to deliver low-latency AI across India.
"Our resolve is clear: make intelligence as ubiquitous as connectivity," he said. "When compute becomes infrastructure, innovation will become inevitable."
Adani, on the other hand, unveiled a USD 100-billion investment to develop renewable-energy-powered, hyperscale AI-ready data centres by 2035 -- one of the world's largest integrated energy-compute commitments.
The initiative is expected to catalyse an additional USD 150 billion across server manufacturing, cloud platforms, and supporting industries, creating a projected USD 250 billion AI infrastructure ecosystem in India.
India must architect its own artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure rather than rely on imports, Adani Group executive director Jeet Adani said on Thursday, warning that AI will redefine national sovereignty.
Other major investments announced at the Summit included USD 50 billion commitment by Microsoft by the end of the decade to expand artificial intelligence access across the Global South. "India, not surprisingly, is one of the largest," its vice chair and president, Brad Smith, said.
The firm had unveiled USD 17.5 billion investment in AI investments in India last year.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced a new subsea cable initiative to boost AI connectivity between India, the US and other locations, alongside partnerships for cloud infrastructure platform support to over 20 million public servants across 800 districts.
Yotta Data Services, backed by a real estate group headed by Niranjan Hiranandani, announced over USD 2 billion spend on Nvidia's latest chips in an artificial intelligence computing hub it is setting up just outside the national capital.
While Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) signed up ChatGPT parent OpenAI as its first customer for its data centre unit under the global AI infrastructure initiative Stargate, infrastructure major Larsen & Toubro announced a proposed venture with Nvidia to build AI-ready data centre infrastructure, advanced computing platforms, and ecosystem enablement required to support large-scale AI workloads.
