This is 'vote bandi': I.N.D.I.A. bloc warns EC of 'big protest' over electoral exercise in Bihar

New Delhi: After a “not so friendly” meeting with the Election Commission, I.N.D.I.A. parties on Tuesday said it will launch a protest in a “big way” if the poll body goes ahead with the the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Bihar. They alleged that the “vote-bandi” exercise is aimed at "disenfranchising" the poor and migrant workers.

The leaders claimed that the “votes of Biharis are in danger” and that the EC action has put a question mark on the citizenship claims of a large number of youth who have enrolled as voters after 2003. They also claimed that the EC itself told them that 20 per cent of voters in Bihar are migrant workers and liable to lose their vote in the state if they are not ordinary residents.

While the parties claimed that the EC “did not provide satisfactory” response to their concerns, a senior official said each issue raised by the leaders was “fully addressed” and thanked them for appointing more than 1.5 lakh Booth Level Agents (BLAs) for participating in the exercise so that no eligible voter is left out.

The run up to the meeting saw tension rising between the EC and the I.N.D.I.A. bloc with the poll body only inviting RJD, CPI(ML)L and CPI(M) initially for the meeting citing that these were the only three parties that responded to its follow-up queries after seeking an appointment. Just before the meeting, the EC insisted that it will only allow two persons from a party, forcing Congress to make their three senior leaders sit out after registering their protest.

Leaders of parties, including Congress, RJD, Samajwadi Party, DMK, CPI(M), CPI, CPI(ML)L, NCP (Sharadchandra Pawar), Shiv Sena (UBT), DMK and JMM, met Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar and Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu Vivek Joshi and questioned the rationale and the timing of the SIR.

After the meeting, senior RJD MP Manoj K Jha told reporters that they will “have to hit the streets” if the EC “goes ahead with the exercise to disenfranchise” a large number of voters. He said the EC is asking for documents from those who do not have a “second suitcase to put such documents”.

CPI(ML)L General Secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya said their “worries about the SIR have increased” after the meeting.

“You are putting the citizenship of youth who enrolled as voters after 2003, who are protesting against unemployment, in doubt. All people are now being subjected to citizenship tests. Like ‘notebandi’ (demonetisation), now you are coming up with ‘vote-bandi’. Our concerns have risen now…Votes in Bihar are in danger. We will have to launch a ‘bada andolan’ (big protest),” he said.

“The EC has given us statistics that around 20 per cent of Bihar voters are migrants and to vote in a particular place, they need to be ordinary residents. It means that the EC does not consider workers who migrate to earn their living ordinary voters,” he said.

Senior Congress MP Abhishek Singhvi dismissed EC’s contentions that the parties have appointed around 1.58 lakh Booth Level Agents and it is necessary to clean the electoral rolls against the backdrop of allegations over Maharashtra rolls.

He said there is no contradiction as parties "are left with no option" when such an exercise is announced and it does not mean that the parties cannot raise objection to such exercise. He also said if purifying electoral rolls is the intention, it should not be done close on the heels of an election.

He said the last revision was in 2003 and “for 22 years, more than four or five Bihar elections have happened. Were all those elections faulty?...Secondly the SIR in 2003 was held one year before the Lok Sabha polls and two years before the Assembly election. Today, you are having this exercise in the second most largest electoral populated state in one or two months.”

"This is the worst attack on the basic structure of the Constitution...Today, even if you wrongfully delete or wrongfully add a single voter, it is creating a non-level playing field that affects democracy and elections,” he said.