Puppet has to go but puppeteer pair must be held accountable too : Congress
The Congress on Tuesday, October 7, alleged that the West Bengal Assembly elections were a "text book case of mass manipulation and rigging" overseen by Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar, asserting that while the "puppet" must go, the "two puppeteers" also need to be held accountable.
Congress general secretary in-charge of communications Jairam Ramesh shared a media report claiming that judges of more than a dozen Tribunals, appointed in West Bengal on Supreme Court orders to process SIR appeals, including those of 27 lakh deleted electors, had flagged significant gaps in a digital portal set up for them by the Election Commission's IT division.
"More skeletons are tumbling out of the Election Omission of India's closet," Ramesh wrote on X, using a frequent pejorative Congress has used for the Election Commission. "Clearly the PM-HM (Narendra Modi-Amit Shah) strategy was to somehow capture and win the West Bengal Assembly elections at any cost. It was a text book case of mass manipulation and rigging which was overseen by the CEC," he alleged, adding, "The puppet has of course to go but the two puppeteers too have to be held accountable. They stand brutally exposed and now it is only a matter of time for them to meet their reckoning."
Ramesh said MPs from the INDIA bloc, along with other invited opposition MPs, would march peacefully to the Election Commission office on Tuesday to demand the CEC's resignation. He also claimed, "Looks like the Parliament complex is already under an unprecedented security siege showing the extreme nervousness of the puppeteer pair."
Ramesh's remarks came a day after the opposition sharpened its attack on Kumar, following the Supreme Court's statement that it had never approved modifications to Form 6, the application used by eligible individuals to seek inclusion in electoral rolls. A bench of Chief Justice of India Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V. Mohana said, "We will examine all the decisions. If any decision is not in accordance with the law, we will annul it. You know the power of the court," adding, "Any modification to Form 6 has not been approved by us. Let's be clear. When records are produced, we would like to see who has modified it."
The Congress and other opposition parties have demanded Kumar's immediate resignation, alleging he "betrayed the Constitution" at the behest of the Prime Minister and Home Minister by unilaterally altering the SIR form. Congress leader Rahul Gandhi had said on Monday that the CEC and everyone involved in what he called a "criminal assault on democracy" would be held accountable.
The opposition's intensified campaign comes amid a separate controversy sparked by an Indian Express report, which found that Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had formally objected at least 14 times over the past 10 months to decisions and orders, most relating to the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, taken without their knowledge. Responding to the report, the Election Commission has maintained that differing views among commissioners are a normal part of institutional deliberation, and that all its orders carry full legal sanction and follow established statutory procedures.
