Congress general secretary in-charge communications Jairam Ramesh on Monday stepped up his attack on Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, calling for his resignation and alleging that the poll panel had exceeded its constitutional mandate in determining citizenship during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls.
Sharing an interview with former Supreme Court judge Sudhanshu Dhulia, Ramesh said the Election Commission of India (ECI) was not responsible for determining citizenship.
“The ECI is Election Commission of India, not Establisher of Citizenship of Indians,” Ramesh said in a post on X.
He said Dhulia, who retired from the Supreme Court last year, had reaffirmed that determining citizenship was not the ECI's constitutional responsibility and that citizenship was governed by the Citizenship Act, 1955, as amended by Parliament.
Ramesh accused the CEC of violating the Constitution “in letter and spirit” on citizenship and other issues, including the alleged amendment of Form 6, which he claimed could disenfranchise Gen Z voters.
“The first step in the long road to reclaiming our democracy is the resignation of the CEC who is both a front for the diabolical PM-HM (Narendra Modi-Amit Shah) duo and an affront to the Constitution of India,” he said.
The Congress leader's remarks came a day after the party criticised the ECI's proposed measures concerning the SIR, calling the exercise a “disaster” and alleging that the steps announced for deleted or at-risk voters would not address what it termed “mass disenfranchisement”.
Ramesh also criticised the ECI's recent press note on the issue, describing it as an attempt at “damage control”.
The ECI on Saturday said all SIR orders had received the unanimous consent of all three commissioners and that changes to Form 6 for voter enrolment had been upheld by the Supreme Court.
The poll panel's statement came amid reports of differences between CEC Gyanesh Kumar and Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi.
The ECI said letters sent by Sandhu and Joshi to the Cabinet Secretary concerned an officer on deputation and did not relate to policy or IT division matters.
However, The Indian Express has reported that Sandhu and Joshi had recorded objections at least 14 times over the past 10 months to SIR-related decisions and orders, which they said had been issued without their knowledge or recommendation.
(With inputs from PTI)
