Congress Slams EC’s Special Intensive Revision of Electoral Rolls in Bihar

The Congress party Friday came out strongly against the Election Commission’s decision to undertake a Special Intensive Revision of the electoral rolls in Bihar ahead of the Assembly elections.

According to Congress General Secretary (Organisation) K C Venugopal, the SIR is a “sinister exercise” aimed at depriving lakhs of voters of their franchise.

Advertisement

“This government specialises in giving people hell. The SIR is a sinister exercise to deprive lakhs of voters of their franchise,” Venugopal said, in a post shared on handle X.

“The unnecessary haste and their absolute refusal to address genuine concerns raised by the Opposition point to this being a clear effort to destroy the electoral system in Bihar. We will not let this go through. They must halt this ridiculous exercise immediately,” Venugopal warned.

The Congress party’s empowered group of leaders and experts has consistently been expressing concerns that the SIR would lead to the “wilful exclusion of voters” and that lakhs of union and state government officials would control and dictate who has the correct documents and who doesn’t.

The opposition apprehends that ”the move is being seen as an explicit admission by the EC that all is not well with India’s electoral rolls, echoing concerns previously raised by the Congress and the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi”.

The special intensive revision, already in progress, involves visiting every single household and re-enrolling every eligible voter in Bihar after verifying identity and residential documents, effectively discarding the current electoral rolls and creating a fresh new electoral roll for voters across the state. However, the poll panel has clarified that the SIR exercise will be carried out on 2.93 crore of the State’s 7.89 crore voters.