The Congress on Friday termed the Election Commission's decision to give voters left out of the draft electoral rolls in seven states another chance to enrol as a "U-turn", saying it was a "belated admission that wrongful deletion and exclusion" has taken place during the SIR process.
The opposition party also reiterated its demand that Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar must go and the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls must be suspended.
Facing allegations of disenfranchising crores of voters, the Election Commission on Friday gave a fresh chance to electors of seven states who were marked as Absent, Shifted, Dead and Duplicate (ASDD), and whose names could not be included in the draft rolls during the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise.
In a letter, the EC directed the chief electoral officers of Delhi, Maharashtra, Haryana, Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand, Telangana and Nagaland to facilitate the inclusion of such electors in the final electoral rolls.
Congress general secretary in-charge communications Jairam Ramesh said, "Another day, yet another U-turn. The Election Commission of India has just issued instructions to include left-out voters in the on-going SIR in seven states/UTs."
"This is a belated admission that wrongful deletion and exclusion has indeed taken place under the ASDD (Absent, Shifted, Dead, Duplicate) category," Ramesh said on X.
The ECI is carrying out corrective-after-corrective following the nationwide outrage and anger over SIR which has robbed over 13 crore Indians of their constitutional right to vote, he said.
"Every new set of orders begs the question: what was the point of this bureaucratic mess that every Indian has been put through? These repeated clarifications and amendments actually expose the true intent of the diabolical PM-HM (Narendra Modi-Amit Shah). They have been caught out," Ramesh said.
"SIR is the latest form of Vote Chori. And now that the Chori has been caught, the ECI and the PM-HM duo are doing everything to cover their tracks," he alleged.
Every corrective also reinforces what has become abundantly clear -- Gyanesh Kumar must go and SIR must be suspended, Ramesh added.
The EC has also asked officials to establish a monitoring mechanism to ensure that no eligible elector is deprived of the opportunity to be included in the Final Electoral Roll, while preventing duplicate enrolments.
The EC's decision covers electors who were issued enumeration forms but whose forms were not received back, resulting in their exclusion from the draft rolls.
The opposition has accused the EC of deleting the names of crores of eligible citizens from the electoral rolls at the behest of the BJP. The poll authority has defended the revision, citing its validation by the Supreme Court.
(With inputs from PTI)
