Kamal Haasan maiden speech in Rajya Sabha: ‘Special Intensive Revision a disease giving rise to many living dead’

Actor-turned-MP and president of Makkal Needhi Maiam (MNM) Kamal Haasan, in his maiden speech in the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday (February 4, 2026), raised concerns over the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls. He said the SIR could delete 1 crore voters from the list in Tamil Nadu and expressed support for West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s opposition to the SIR.

Citing the SIR in Bihar, he said the State had become a land of “many living dead”, and added this disease should not be allowed to spread across the country. “Election Commission is surely facilitating the spread of this disease,” Mr. Haasan said. “My imminent concern is the forthcoming elections. I wrote it down, thinking only of the present. I call it the spell-checked story of the living dead. We want to cast a vote, and the election commission is checking our right to vote. They are checking the spellings and addresses, and that too erroneously. We just want to cast our vote,” Mr. Haasan said.

“We fear that there could soon be nearly one crore living dead on paper in Tamil Nadu,” he added and demanded that the “living dead be resurrected”. “If you refuse to help us with this redirection, you achieve nothing but half-baked, half-finished illegal electoral conquest,” Mr. Haasan said. “This democratic juggernaut will roll over differences, but should never roll over people. We will not allow it. Nobody is immortal. No government can or should aim for permanency. No government in the history of this world has achieved it yet, and none ever will. This government also falls under the universal political unwritten law,” Mr. Haasan said while asking all to “grow up along with a growing progressive democracy”.

Kamal Haasan raises SIR issue in Rajya Sabha

Nirmala Sitharaman’s response

Later in the day, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman issued a clarification on X, referring to the statement by Mr. Hassan in his Rajya Sabha speech alleging that she had used derogatory words about the Tamil language in 2025. She said that she had quoted Periyar E.V. Ramasamy Naicker and it was not her views. She also attached a video clipping of the speech to support her claim.