Top leaders of the INDIA bloc will meet in Delhi on Saturday to discuss their strategy for the forthcoming Monsoon Session of Parliament, which is expected to witness stormy confrontations between the ruling NDA and the Opposition INDIA bloc over the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the voter list in Bihar.
Leader of Opposition in the Bihar Assembly, Tejashwi Yadav, told the media in Patna on Thursday that the Opposition will forcefully raise the issue in Parliament as well as on the streets.
Accusing the Election Commission of acting as a wing of the BJP, he said, “We are now certain that Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Gupta is working at the behest of the BJP and the Modi government.”
“We went to the Election Commission, observed Bihar Bandh, and approached the Supreme Court, but the CEC remained silent and continued with the job assigned by PM Modi and Amit Shah to benefit the BJP and NDA in the name of voter list revision. This is dangerous for democracy. We will fight to protect justice and democracy at every level,” he added.
The RJD leader expressed surprise at Bihar CM Nitish Kumar and the BJP’s silence on the issue despite NDA leader Chandrababu Naidu raising questions about the exercise.
Bihar Congress President Rajesh Ram said, “From day one, we feared that the entire exercise would turn out to be a ‘farziwada’ (scam). The CEC has proved us right. Voters with particular surnames are being targeted. This is a conspiracy to remove voters from the OBC, EBC, Dalit, and minority communities from the list.”
He said that even during the first meeting of the INDIA bloc leaders with Election Commission officials, they had raised the issue of migrant workers, who constitute about 20% of the total voters in the state. But the Election Commission has shown no sympathy towards them.
“If you are planning to snatch people’s democratic rights, their identity, rest assured, we will not remain silent. We will expose the CEC,” he added.