Congress committee demands halting SIR, restoring 130 million deleted voters amid Election Commission row

The Congress Working Committee (CWC) demanded restoration of 130 million deleted voters in the electoral rolls and a halt to the special intensive revision (SIR). It also called for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s resignation.

After a CWC meeting on Tuesday, general secretary KC Venugopal announced a massive agitation at state, district and booth levels, in coordination with INDIA-bloc allies, and said the party would reach out to all voters who have had their names struck off the list. The CWC meeting saw the Congress shift its strategy from attacking Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar alone to holding the Prime Minister responsible for the “fraud exercise to destroy democracy of the country.”

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“This is not the game of Gyanesh Kumar. He is only a tool. Whenever dictators lose the confidence of common voters, they will try to find special ways to stay in power. This exercise (SIR) could not happen without the concurrence of Modi and Amit Shah. It was done under clear directions of Gyanesh Kumar’s masters. The PM should have intervened and stopped this. PM should resign as it was his moral responsibility to stop this exercise,” Venugopal said.

Rahul Gandhi compares SIR with freedom movement

To be sure, HT’s analysis of SIR deletions by constituency has shown no correlation with the outcome; and some of the deletions have been caused by death and migration. But the exclusion of millions of voters from draft rolls — in Delhi, 33% of the UT’s 14.5 million voters were excluded— has resulted in public angst and anxiety.

Revelations by the Indian Express last week that two election commissioners disagreed with some of the decisions, and that the central database of electors wasn’t accessible to on-ground officers tasked with adding and deleting names have caused a stir. The Election Commission has since clarified that all decisions have been unanimous, based on the majority, and also modified the SIR process to reduce the inconvenience to voters.

The Congress has consistently opposed SIR and sought to present it as a way to fix the mandate; on Tuesday, leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi sought to compare the party’s fight against the exercise to the freedom movement. He referred to the Congress session in Lahore in 1929 when the party adopted the goals of Purna Swaraj or complete independence. He also reminded the CWC that the party’s strategy is to both oppose and resist.

Mallikarjun Kharge says ‘vote greatest weapon for poor’

Chairing the meeting, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge demanded that complete data regarding every major change made to the electoral rolls must be made public and “independent and time-bound inquiries must be conducted wherever evidence of serious discrepancies emerges.”

Kharge also sought that voters whose names have been removed must be fully informed and given an opportunity to appeal and that political parties must be provided with the electoral rolls and relevant data in a simple format and in a timely manner. Seeking more transparency, Kharge also demanded transparency in the critical data and decisions related to the election process so that no party has grounds to claim that information is being withheld.

The SIR process does involve booth level agents of political parties, with whom data on the deletions in the draft roll is shared.

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In his opening speech, Kharge launched a vitriolic attack against both Prime Minister Modi and CEC Kumar, calling him a “puppet” of the ruling dispensation. “History bears witness that ten years ago, this very Prime Minister devastated India’s economy with the decision of “demonetisation.” And now, ten years later, he is destroying our robust democracy through a conspiracy of “vote-demonetisation” (disenfranchisement),” Kharge said. His reference was to the 2016 decision by the Modi government to invalidate high value currency notes in a bid to tackle unaccounted wealth (or black money).

“The poor bear the brunt of all his flawed policies... I know that the poor possess only one source of power: their vote. We will not let that be snatched away under any circumstances,” the Congress president said, arguing that vote is the greatest weapon for the poor, Dalits and deprived.