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The poll panel members on Monday. (Anil Sharma)
HOURS AFTER the Election Commission announced that it would conduct the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in 12 states and Union Territories, including the Opposition-ruled Kerala, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal which are headed for polls next year, the first pushback came from the DMK-governed Tamil Nadu.
Calling the exercise a “conspiracy” to snatch the voting rights of the people of the state, the M K Stalin government called an all-party meeting on November 2 to discuss the issue.
Opposition parties have been up in arms against the EC ever since it announced and conducted the SIR in the election-bound Bihar.
After the EC announcement on conducting the SIR between November and February, the DMK and its allies went into a huddle in Chennai. They accused the BJP government at the Centre of trying to “discredit and dismantle democracy”.
The DMK-led alliance said carrying out such a massive exercise during the north-east monsoon season in November and December would be extremely difficult. “We are not saying that the voter list should not be revised. But it should not be done in a hurry… It is not right to start doing this now with the (TN Assembly) elections in April,” the parties said in a statement. They alleged that the exercise in Bihar had “targeted Muslims, Scheduled Castes and women”. “Tamil Nadu will not allow any such conspiracy… will fight together,” the parties said.
The ruling TMC in West Bengal and the CPI(M) government in Kerala, too, slammed the move. “SIR in Bihar was just a dress rehearsal. Their main target is West Bengal. The people of Bengal will shut the EC up, which is ‘extremely compromised’, in a few months,” senior TMC leader Derek O’Brien told The Indian Express. Elections are due in Tamil Nadu, West Bengal and Kerala in April-May next year.
CPI(M) general secretary M A Baby called the EC decision “arbitrary” and “unilateral”. “That the EC is hastily going forward with the revision, even as the Supreme Court is hearing petitions challenging the same in Bihar, shows its utter contempt for democratic norms. The Kerala Assembly had unanimously passed a resolution against conducting such an exercise when the state is at the threshold of elections to local bodies and state Assembly. The manner in which the EC has turned a deaf ear to all demands for transparency only validates doubts that it is acting at the behest of the ruling party and its nefarious plot to manipulate voter lists,” CPI(M) general secretary M A Baby said.
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The Congress too raised questions on the EC’s intentions. “We have not yet received answers to the questions related to the SIR in Bihar. The situation was such that the Supreme Court had to step in several times to rectify the exercise in Bihar… The intentions of the EC and the BJP, which has made the EC its puppet, regarding Bihar’s SIR have already come to light before the entire country,” Congress media department head Pawan Khera said.
AAP MP Sanjay Singh said the CEC “is acting as an agent of BJP and Narendra Modi”.
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