NEW DELHI: Stepping up his attack on Election Commission (EC), Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Thursday alleged that the EC has been caught “red handed” stealing votes in the name of Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls in Bihar, and asked whether the poll body has completely become BJP’s ‘Election chori branch’.
The EC has all along maintained that the revision, being held after 22 years, will cleanse the voters’ list of ineligible people, duplicate entries and include those eligible as per law.
Gandhi shared a post by Ajit Anjum, whose YouTube channel is running a series on special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Bihar.
“The EC in Bihar has been caught red handed stealing votes in the name of ‘SIR’. Work - just theft but name is ‘SIR’ and FIR will be lodged against the one who exposes it!” Gandhi said in a post in Hindi on X.
‘Is EC still ‘Election Commission’ or has it completely become BJP’s ‘Election Chori’ branch?” the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha said.
Anjum has been accused of spreading communal tensions in Begusarai district by the local administration. He had denied the allegation and shared a screenshot of an FIR lodged against him.
Opposition parties have asserted that the ongoing exercise will disfranchise crores of eligible citizens for the want of citizenship documents.
Congress general secretary K C Venugopal said the revelations from the SIR exercise expose the BJP-controlled EC. “Preliminary estimates suggest 35 lakh voters are being disenfranchised in this hurried process. On the ground, document requirements are creating havoc, BLOs have absolute discretion in enrolling or rejecting voters, and voters are worried about whether their right to vote will remain or be snatched away from them.”
“Journalists who expose this blatant ‘Votebandi’ are being slapped with FIRs and hateful agendas are peddled to distract from the real issue at hand. This reeks of mass-scale election rigging, and we will never let it pass,” he added..
On Wednesday, Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar thanked the eligible voters of Bihar for their active participation in the “much-needed” cleaning of the electoral rolls during SIR.
The CEC’s remarks came in the backdrop of the Supreme Court hearing a clutch of pleas questioning the intent behind the SIR ahead of the assembly polls in the state scheduled later this year.