No deletion of genuine voters from rolls, assures Rao

Hyderabad: Telangana BJP state president N Ramchander Rao said the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) being taken up in the state was not a BJP programme, but constitutional process undertaken by the Election Commission of India to update the voter list. He stated that SIR has been conducted 11 times since Independence, with the last such exercise held in 2002.Speaking at a party workers meeting at Nagole on Friday, he said that no political party had opposed the SIR process in the past, but this time the Congress and other opposition parties like BRS, AIMIM were deliberately spreading fear and panic among people by falsely claiming that the votes of Muslims would be deleted.“This is completely false. No vote of any genuine voter belonging to any community will be deleted. The SIR process is meant only to remove dead voters, duplicate voters, fake voters and illegal Rohingya from the electoral rolls,” Ramchander Rao said.The BJP leader claimed that even in Bengal, where large-scale deletions took place, a majority of the deleted votes were Hindu votes, and in many places where maximum deletions happened, the TMC still won.He also said that the Congress and BRS are selectively blaming SIR whenever BJP performs well, but they do not speak about states like Kerala where the Congress won.“A voter must be a citizen of India. Why should a Bangladeshi or a Rohingya vote in our elections? Fake votes and illegal votes must be identified and removed,” he said.