Actor-turned politician and Makkal Needhi Maiam (MNM) chief Kamal Haasan on Wednesday, in his maiden speech at the Rajya Sabha, expressed solidarity with West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee in her fight against the Election Commission regarding the controversial Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls.
Speaking at the Upper House, Kamal Haasan called the deletion of votes through SIR a disease plaguing the country and said the ECI is facilitating its spread.
Haasan called Bihar the "land of living dead" in apparent reference to irregularities in the final voter list after SIR, in which names of voters who were alive were deleted, citing death.
"Bihar has become the land of the living dead. We don't want this disease to spread across the country. My Didi from Bengal also lamented the same at the ECI office...she is litigating it in the Supreme Court as we speak now. ECI is surely facilitating the spread of this disease," he said.
Expressing concern regarding the deletion of voters in Tamil Nadu, he said, there could soon be "one crore living dead on paper."
Over 97 lakh voters were deleted from the draft electoral rolls published after the initial phase of SIR in TN in December last year. Several voters, deleted from the list after being branded dead, were found to be alive. Some of these voters have spoken to TNIE and expressed shock over their names being deleted from the electoral rolls.
The veteran actor demanded the "living dead to be resurrected" and urged action to prevent the "impending disaster."
"I cannot pray to God to alleviate this impending disaster. My rationalist mind has already rejected the idea years ago. I won't pray to any government either. I'm demanding that the living dead be resurrected. Not through miracles.. we cannot wait for miracles, our lives are short. Act now," he said.
Haasan also slammed the ECI for deleting voters from the electoral rolls for minor spelling mistakes in their entries.
"Spelling mistakes are a curse only for languages, and modern literature forgives these in favour of content, as does the internet, but the Election Commission obviously does not. EC doesn’t mean English Coaches," he said.
Stressing that no government will hold power permanently, he said, "This democratic juggernaut will roll over differences, but should never roll over people. We will not allow it. Nobody is immortal. No government can or should aim for permanency. No government in the history of this world has achieved it yet, and none ever will. This government also falls under the universal political unwritten law.”
Kamal Haasan's comments came amid relentless protests by opposition parties, including the ruling Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) in Tamil Nadu and Trinamool Congress (TMC) in West Bengal against the SIR, alleging arbitrariness and mass disenfranchisement of voters, especially those from marginalised communities.
Upping the ante, Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday personally appeared before the apex court to argue her case against the conduct of SIR in Bengal.
