Election Commission press conference, launch of I.N.D.I.A. bloc's ‘Vote Adhikar Yatra’ on August 17

New Delhi: The Election Commission will hold an unprecedented press conference on Sunday afternoon, a day on which the I.N.D.I.A bloc will launch its fortnight-long ‘Vote Adhikar Yatra’ led by senior leaders Rahul Gandhi and Tejashwi Yadav.

Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar and two Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi will address the media and are expected to speak about the contentious Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in Bihar and allegations of the EC colluding with BJP for stealing votes.

The press conference will be at the National Media Centre in New Delhi at 3 PM. The EC usually conducts press conferences only to poll election schedule. 

The EC and Opposition have been locking horns over the conduct of elections for some time and it has aggravated with the announcement of SIR in Bihar, which will be extended across the country in the coming months. Claims of vote theft have also been raised by Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul.

The press conference also comes days after the Supreme Court instructed the EC to provide the list of around 65 lakh voters which were not included in the draft electoral list prepared after the SIR with the reasons for the deletion of their names. 

On the around 1,300 km yatra in Bihar covering 22 districts between August 17 and September 1, Congress Media and Publicity Department Chairman Pawan Khera said, “we will not accept that the Election Commission becomes a compartment of this so-called ‘double engine’. We are fighting against this and will continue to do so in the future.”

“Whenever Rahul-ji has set out for a yatra, the democracy of this country has turned a page. 'Voter Rights Yatra' will be a historic march. It will prove to be a milestone in the history of our democracy,” he told reporters.

CPI(ML)L General Secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya claimed that the EC had earlier spoken about identifying a large number of illegal immigrants but has stopped speaking about it. 

“It turned out to be a hoax and a false alarm,” he said while referring to an answer tabled in Parliament in which the Modi government said there were only three cases of foreigners being enrolled as voters till then. “Now an SIR is being conducted, but there is not a single case there,” he added.