HYDERABAD: Describing the anti-SIR campaign as “false propaganda”, BJP national vice-president Ram Madhav on Thursday said that the Congress and Rahul Gandhi should realise that they have no support in their attempt to “undermine democratic institutions”.
Addressing the media at the state party headquarters here, Ram Madhav said: “The argument against SIR is an issue between Congress and the Election Commission. The INDIA bloc parties are targeting democratic institutions.
This is also an attempt to belittle the electoral victory achieved by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. That is why we are holding press conferences and padayatras to put forth our point of view,” he said, adding that he himself had joined such a rally in Tamil Nadu on Thursday.
The BJP leader dismissed the claim that 10 lakh people had turned up at the rally at Ramlila Maidan in Delhi as ‘utter lies. “The actual holding capacity of the ground is only 50,000,” Ram Madhav said.
Alleging that the sanctity of elections was violated by the Congress on two occasions in the past, he said that former prime minister Indira Gandhi imposed Emergency after she was found guilty of electoral malpractice by the Allahabad High Court, and her son Rajiv Gandhi was responsible for rigging the Jammu & Kashmir Assembly polls, which led to the youth of that state taking up arms, giving rise to a prolonged insurgency that continues till date.
The BJP leader went on to say that the SIR was not a new exercise but has been carried out several times since 1952.
“The last revision was held in 2004. If on average 90 lakh people die per year should they not be accounted for,” he asked, adding that not all deaths come to the notice of the authorities, while families register births to avail benefits.
The voter enumeration is done by the state authorities, he averred when a question was posed on the centralisation of electoral rolls.
Calling the BJP a natural claimant for power in Telangana in the next Assembly elections, he reminded that the saffron party had backed the demand for statehood for the region in the 1990s.
‘Centre hasn’t released any data on foreigners’
Responding to a query on the media, quoting officials, pegging the number of foreigners living illegally in six states like Karnataka, Odisha, Jharkhand, Meghalaya, Kerala and Mizoram at just 1,600, BJP national vice-president Ram Madhav has categorically stated that the Union government has not made the data on the number of foreigners public. “No such data has been released by the Election Commission. Such data is only available with the home ministry,” he said.
