DMK’s SIR protest a diversionary tactic, Stalin’s Kolathur constituency has 4,379 fake voters: Nirmala Sitharaman

Debunking the protests by the ruling DMK and its allies across Tamil Nadu against the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls as a diversionary tactic to conceal the Stalin government’s failure, BJP leader and Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday claimed that the Chief Minister’s assembly constituency in Chennai itself had 4,379 fake voters.

“The SIR exercise is being carried out to remove fake voters only. But Chief Minister MK Stalin is deriding it as a conspiracy. Even in his Kolathur constituency, there are 4,379 fake voters. Deputy Chief Minister Udhayanidhi doesn’t even know what the SIR is about, and the DMK protest is an attempt to hoodwink the people,” she said, addressing the media, after participating in the Zonal Core-Committee meeting of the BJP in Coimbatore.

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“No genuine voter will be removed and disenfranchised,” she asserted, and asked the opposition parties whether no SIR had been held earlier. “SIR had been held 10 times before the year 2000 and thrice after that. While SIR is a revision, Udhayanidhi claims it is a ‘restriction’ and the DMK paints a picture as though the BJP had imposed it. It had happened when the DMK was sharing power at the Centre,” countered the Finance Minister, defending the SIR exercise.

Maintaining that the Election Commission is constitutionally mandated under Articles 324 and 329 to revise the electoral rolls ahead of every election, she said, “Of the 4,379 fake voters in Kolathur, 933 had bogus addresses and 30 shared the same address. There are over 7 lakh duplicate voters, 20 lakh fake entries, and 35 lakh migrated voters, taking the total number of ineligible entries in the State to 68 lakh.” She then asked, “Should not such fake voters and ineligible entries be removed?”

The Finance Minister accused the DMK and other opposition parties of weakening statutory and constitutional institutions, saying they blame the EVMs whenever the BJP wins and are now targeting the EC. Responding to a question on Rahul Gandhi’s ‘Vote Chori’ expose, she dismissed the Congress leader’s claims, saying, “He shouts ‘Vote Chori’ by twisting facts, be it Bihar, Haryana, or Maharashtra. It is a fear of losing the elections.”

Refuting that the Income Tax Department is being misused to target political opponents, the Finance Minister reiterated that none of the actions taken by the department had been proved wrong.

Her remark that the BJP never interferes in other parties’ internal affairs is seen as a rebuttal to expelled AIADMK leader KA Sengottaiyan, who had claimed that it was the saffron party that had asked to engage in unifying the Dravidian party by bringing in the splinter groups. Before his expulsion, he had met, among others, Nirmala Sitharaman and Union Home Minister Amit Shah. However, with the AIADMK’s return to the NDA fold, Shah had categorically said that the BJP would not interfere in the AIADMK’s affairs.