Editors Guild of India has issued a strong condemnation of the stripping off the voting right and the passport renewal facility from R. Rajagopal, a distinguished former editor of The Telegraph newspaper, whose name was deleted from the electoral roll of West Bengal during the SIR, which is a highly controversial voter list verification process by the Election Commission of India (ECI). The SIR exercise by the ECI across the country checks the validity of current voter records against the electoral roll of 2002 to determine those who are not entitled to voting and, consequently, the deletion of more than 60 million names has been done from November 2025 onwards, out of which nine million names have been deleted from West Bengal alone. Rajagopal, who has been living and voting from Kolkata for the past 25 years, is an exception because his name could not be traced to the electoral list of 2002, hence, making his passport renewal incomplete due to police verification issue regarding voter registration.