SIR: Ensure 'irregularities' in draft voter rolls don't go unchallenged, Congress tells State leaders

Party accuses Election Commission of being on a 'sinister' mission of deleting votes of 'some sections of society'

New Delhi: The Congress on Tuesday asked its State leaders to ensure that “irregularities” in draft electoral rolls prepared after the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in 12 States and Union Territories do not go unchallenged like in Bihar, even as it accused the Election Commission of being on a “sinister” mission of deleting votes of “some sections of society”.

Leaders and Congress Working Committee members from 12 States and Union Territories were called for a meeting, which was chaired by party chief Mallikarjun Kharge and attended by Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi and general secretary (Organisation) K C Venugopal. The party will be organising a rally in Delhi's Ramlila Maidan in early December against SIR and ‘vote chori’.

Sources said the view among the leaders was that the SIR was “exclusionary” in nature and the time for completing the exercise is very less compared to the time taken earlier for similar ones. State leaders have told the central leadership they have appointed adequate booth-level agents and conducted training for them.

The central leaders asked the State functionaries to ensure that claims and objections are filed if they find any deliberate inclusion or deletion from the draft rolls. In Bihar, they said, the Congress did not file claims and objections, which gave the EC a handle to claim that the rolls were genuine and that the parties have not found any discrepancies.

The leaders were told that they should get the legal teams to help in filing claims and objections after draft rolls are published and later appeals and second appeals after the final list. Rahul told the meeting that it is the duty of the EC to prepare a “pure” voter list but is not ready to do so, while asking the party leaders to wage a “strong political battle” on the issue.

Rahul said parties like the BJP and the Congress may have a mechanism to monitor the SIR exercise but it may not be the case for a smaller party. The responsibility of ensuring that no one loses vote should be of the EC and it should not be put on parties. "Shouldn’t the smaller parties operate in this country," he asked.

He claimed that one should not expect justice from the EC, which is acting like a “party faction”.

Kharge said the EC should “immediately demonstrate” that it is not operating under the shadow of the BJP, which is “attempting to weaponise the SIR process” for vote theft. “Our workers, BLAs, and district/city/block presidents will therefore remain relentlessly vigilant. We will expose every attempt, however subtle, to delete genuine voters or insert bogus ones,” he said.

After the meeting, Venugopal told reporters that the “general feeling” among the leaders was that the EC was “purposefully trying to delete votes of some sections of the society” and the SIR is “designed” to do so. “That was the experience in Bihar,” he claimed.

Finding fault with the Special Revision announced in Assam, he claimed that booth-level agents of parties were excluded from the process while alleging that a "sinister attempt" by the EC to "destroy democracy" in the country is on.

He alleged that the EC was putting pressure on booth-level officers to speed up the process, leading to suicides due to work pressure. “It is very clear that the EC is working on behalf of the BJP. Rahul Gandhi has alerted the State leaders to the sinister attempt of the EC,” he alleged.