Election Commission, I.N.D.I.A. on collision course post meeting over Bihar electoral roll revision

New Delhi: The Election Commission (EC) and the I.N.D.I.A bloc are headed for a confrontation if one goes by what both thinks about each other.

EC sources have claimed that the parties, which met the Chief Election Commissioner and Election Commissioners on the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls in Bihar, displayed “lack of seriousness” as most of the leaders who attended were not authorised by their party heads.

Hitting back, Opposition leaders said they were told when they objected to certain conditions put forth for meeting the EC that this is a “New Commission”.

Congress General Secretary (Communications) Jairam Ramesh said they “shudder to think what this ‘New’ Commission's gameplan is” and “how many more Master(s)strokes can we expect?”, implying that the poll body is playing to the tunes of the Modi government.

EC sources said it had received an email from Congress counsel Omar Hooda seeking an "urgent appointment" for leaders of ten parties on June 30 to discuss the Bihar SIR anytime after 4 PM on July 2. The EC, they said, sent out invitations to the heads of all the parties and invited them along with an authorised representative to meet the EC on July 2.

However, only two heads of parties -- CPI General Secretary D Raja and his CPI(ML)L counterpart Dipankar Bhattacharya -- attended the meeting while other parties sent other leaders. Out of the 14 people who attended the meeting, five -- RJD 2, CPI(M) 2 and CPI(ML)L 1 -- were authorised by their respective party heads. Remaining seven people "were not even authorised" by their party chiefs, EC sources claimed.

Sources said senior Congress leaders Jairam Ramesh, Pawan Khera and Akhilesh Prasad Singh could not attend as the EC insisted that only two persons from Congress could attend the meeting and later the party chose senior Congress MP Abhishek Singh and Bihar Congress chief Rajesh Ram to attend the proceedings.

Ramesh posted on 'X' that the EC was "literally compelled to meet the delegation after having refused" to do so.

"A few of us could not meet the ECI, which unilaterally imposed a limit of 2 representatives per party. I myself had to hang around in the waiting room for almost two hours...Most importantly, it cannot dictate arbitrary rules for interacting with parties such as deciding the designation of those attending or the number who can attend or who is or isn’t an authorized person," he said.

“When the delegation rejected these new rules as arbitrary and confusing, the Election Commission informed us this is a ‘New’ Commission. We shudder to think what this 'New' Commission's gameplan is. How many more Master(s)strokes can we expect?” he added.

Singhvi told reporters, “all of us have come here for the last many decades repeatedly, as individual parties, as collective multi-party delegation. I myself must have led more than 50 delegations here. We attended the meeting after signing the attendance under protest.”

He said they were communicated that only party chiefs alone should attend or can attend. “This is unheard of, unthinkable, it will render the dialogue between parties and a constitutional body like EC absolutely impossible, non-feasible. It has never happened in the last so many years,” he said.

The second one was a “very sterile insistence” on two persons per party, he said.