GUWAHATI: Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma referred to a section of Rahul Gandhi's criticism of the special intensive revision of electoral rolls, contending that the Congress leader extended "indirect support" for the exercise through his comments.
Sarma asserted that the SIR is essential for the northeastern state to remove the names of "Bangladeshis".
Addressing a press conference in New Delhi on Thursday, Gandhi claimed that over one lakh votes in the Mahadevapura assembly constituency in Karnataka were found to be fake, duplicate or bulk voters, with invalid addresses and new voters with misuse of Form 6.
"Rahul Gandhi has himself given a certificate that SIR should be conducted. There should be a unique name along with an Aadhaar number.
He (Gandhi) took some North Indian names. In Assam, we have names of Bangladeshis in our voter rolls.
"The same names are in Barpeta, Guwahati, Kerala and Delhi. It is a disease. That is why SIR is being done in Bihar," Sarma told reporters here on Thursday.
The CM said even the names of dead people feature in the electoral rolls of Assam.
"That is why it (SIR) is required in Assam. After a long time, Rahul Gandhi has indirectly supported the Election Commission. His claim establishes that SIR is needed. I welcome it," Sarma said.
Gandhi, the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha, also made explosive claims of a "huge criminal fraud" in polls through collusion between the BJP and the Election Commission.
Alleging that a "vote chori model" was being used in many constituencies across the country, Gandhi said that the judiciary needs to get involved in this because "the democracy that we love so much, does not exist anymore".
He claimed that there was "vote chori" (stealing of votes) of 1,00,250 votes in the Mahadevapura segment, with 11,965 duplicate voters, 40,009 voters with fake and invalid addresses, 10,452 bulk voters or single address voters, 4,132 voters with invalid photos and 33,692 misusing Form 6 of new voters.