NEW DELHI: The Opposition INDIA bloc will submit a petition to the Chief Justice of India at 3 pm on Monday, seeking a halt to the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls and a wider debate on restoring ballot papers, after a protest march beginning at 1.30 pm in the capital.
The letter, signed by the INDIA bloc and leaders of the DMK and Aam Aadmi Party, which are outside the alliance, accused the Election Commission and Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar of partisan conduct. The petition alleged that the revision exercise had deprived vulnerable citizens of their voting rights.
Striking a cautionary note that electoral manipulation was putting democracy in jeopardy, Opposition leaders said their sole purpose is to strengthen, and never to weaken, public confidence in the institutions of our democracy, and to place their concerns, in good faith, before the forum where the citizens of India have always reposed their final trust.
“We all, representing like-minded political parties, firmly opposed to the BJP, believe that the electoral process is being manipulated and outcomes in multiple instances do not reflect the will of the people,” it said.
“We would not have, under normal circumstances, written to you. Given the fact that our democracy is in jeopardy, we have chosen this unusual path,” the leaders said.
Central to their appeal were alleged wrongful deletions in West Bengal, where, according to the letter, 27 lakh people lost their voting rights under a category described as “logical discrepancies”.
Citing appeals examined by a tribunal headed by Justice T S Sivagnanam, the leaders said 1,717 of 1,777 deletions reviewed were found to be wrongful, a proportion of approximately 96%.
If that proportion held across appeals pending before 19 tribunals, more than 25 lakh voters could have been wrongly prevented from voting, they argued. That estimate was an extrapolation in the letter, rather than a finding covering all deletions.
The leaders sought a halt to the ongoing SIR and urged that any fresh exercise be undertaken when the next Assembly election was at least five years away, with election officials visiting households to verify voters.
The signatories include Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav, Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee, DMK leader Tiruchi Siva, RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav, AAP leader Sanjay Singh, NCP(SP) leader Supriya Sule, Shiv Sena (UBT) chief Uddhav Thackeray, CPM leader John Brittas and National Conference president Farooq Abdullah among others.
The leaders clarified that their appeal was addressed to the Supreme Court as an institution, through the CJI and his companion judges, and was not intended to influence any judge hearing the matters mentioned in it.
“When all else fails, people still repose their trust in the judiciary,” they wrote.
Questioning the rationale for the SIR, first launched in Bihar, the letter said the Commission had not released data substantiating claims that Bangladeshis had illegally entered the electoral rolls, even after the Assembly elections were over.
The leaders argued that the documentation requirements were inherently exclusionary, particularly for poor and uneducated voters, Dalits, Adivasis, minorities and migrant workers. Many lacked the prescribed documents or the ability to complete and submit forms, they said.
The letter alleged arbitrary deletions without proper notice, inadequate grievance redressal and changing instructions that confused voters and election officials. It also cited purported instances of booth-level officers forging signatures or uploading forms without voters’ consent, and deceased people being shown as submitting forms.
In Bengal, the leaders alleged that most deletions occurred in constituencies where the TMC was dominant. They also questioned the deployment of 2.4 lakh Central Armed Police Forces personnel and the transfer of 483 officials, including the Chief Secretary and Home Secretary, during the polls.
The letter accused the Commission of selectively enforcing the Model Code of Conduct and failing to act against allegedly communal statements by BJP leaders. It also criticised the appointment law replacing the CJI on the selection committee for election commissioners with a Union minister nominated by the Prime Minister, noting that the legislation remains under challenge before the Supreme Court.
Seeking a broader discussion on electronic voting, the leaders called for “a serious consideration of restoring ballot papers where appropriate”. They argued that electoral processes must command public confidence and alleged that elections in Delhi, Haryana and Maharashtra had also been manipulated.
“Democracies turn into anarchies when institutional mechanisms fail. Therefore, it is the responsibility of all of us to ensure that people’s faith in institutions must endure. And for that, institutions must play their role. We are not questioning the judiciary. In fact, we turn to the courts when every mechanism fails. When this too fails, it leaves open the question - who do we now turn to? We leave that question for you to ponder upon,” it said.
