HYDERABAD: Expressing concern over the possibility of Dalits, minorities and women losing their votes due to the Special Intensive Revision (SIR), Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy called upon party workers to ensure that not a single eligible voter was removed from the electoral rolls.
Addressing a joint meeting of the Pradesh Congress Committee Political Affairs Committee and PCC Advisory Committee at Gandhi Bhavan on Friday, he asked the Mahila Congress to organise cluster-wise meetings on the SIR and create awareness among voters.
He said it was encouraging that party leaders were creating awareness on the SIR and had understood the difficulties it could create for common people, the poor and Congress workers. He said the SIR could become a major issue for Lambadas, tribals and migrant workers.
Stating that people in some Assembly segments might have migrated elsewhere for employment, Revanth asked Congress activists to remain vigilant and ensure that those who had moved temporarily for work were not removed from the electoral rolls.
He directed party workers to create awareness regarding solutions to problems arising out of the SIR process.
He recalled that with the support of booth-level enrollers, the Congress had completed 45 lakh digital memberships in 90 days in the past.
Cong to appoint in-charges to keep track of SIR process
Those who registered the highest number of memberships were felicitated by Rahul Gandhi, Revanth said, while adding that the same enrollers who had played a key role in earlier Congress membership drives should now be utilised during the SIR process.
For the digital membership drive, one in-charge was appointed in every constituency and continuous monitoring was carried out. Similar in-charges should now be appointed for all 119 Assembly constituencies and 17 Lok Sabha segments to keep track of the SIR process, he said.
Assembly in-charges must remain in their constituencies until the SIR process was completed, Revanth said, adding that if the in-charges functioned effectively, not even a single vote would be deleted.
CM to meet party workers once every 10 days
Revanth also said that in-charge ministers should dedicate one full day every 10 days for party activities and interact with workers at the grassroots level.
He said he too would meet grassroots-level party workers once every 10 days and dedicate three days every month to party activities.
He said ministers, MLAs, MPs, MLCs and chairpersons of various corporations must participate in party programmes and that no exemptions would be given to anyone. He also advised party leaders to take into consideration suggestions made by former PCC presidents.
Revanth said that almost all nominated posts had been filled and that the party now had thousands of sarpanches, municipal chairpersons and councillors. All these leaders must move forward in coordination, he added.
The meeting decided to convene Assembly-wise meetings on the SIR in the 15 Assembly constituencies under Hyderabad city limits.
AICC in-charge Meenakshi Natarajan and others were present at the meeting.
Briefing reporters later, Transport Minister Ponnam Prabhakar recalled that after the SIR process, a large number of voters were allegedly removed in West Bengal, Assam and other states.
He said then West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee had approached the court claiming that around 93 lakh votes had been removed in the state.
Prabhakar said party workers who had actively participated in the membership drive would now be deployed across nearly 34,000 polling stations in the state to monitor the SIR process.