Opposition escalates SIR battle
The Congress raised the ante on Tuesday as INDIA bloc leaders plan to discuss a joint agitation
The Congress on Tuesday demanded the removal of Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar, immediate suspension of the SIR, restoration of names struck off from the electoral rolls and the resignation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi on moral grounds.
The party made the demand after a two-and-a-half hour meeting of the Congress Working Committee (CWC) chaired by Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge and attended by former party chiefs Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi, and general secretaries Jairam Ramesh, KC Venugopal, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, among others.
“History bears witness that ten years ago, this very prime minister devastated India’s economy with the decision of notebandi (demonetisation). And now, ten years later, he is destroying our robust democracy through a conspiracy of votebandi (voter disenfranchisement)’,” the Congress chief said.
In his opening CWC address, Kharge also put forward five demands of his party, including making public the complete data regarding every major change made to the electoral rolls and providing political parties with the electoral rolls and relevant data in a simple format and in a timely manner.
Kharge also demanded an independent and time-bound inquiry wherever evidence of serious discrepancies emerges. That voters whose names have been removed must be fully informed and given an opportunity to appeal, and there must be such transparency in the critical data and decisions related to the election process so that no party has grounds to claim that information is being withheld, the Congress chief said.
At the CWC, a resolution was passed which said it recognises that what was once Rahul Gandhi’s solitary conviction has become a nationwide demand for accountability, transparency, and the restoration of the sanctity of India’s electoral system.
Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi told the CWC that EVM and voters’ list “match-fixing” of polls was underway in the country and asserted that his party should not budge from the path of virodh (opposing) as well as pratirodh (resistance) from streets to Parliament, sources said.
During the meeting, the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha pointed out that the Congress had been raising the “vote chori” issue strongly and talked about irregularities in polls in Haryana, Karnataka and Maharashtra but many were sceptical of it, sources said.
Chief ministers of Congress-ruled states — DK Shivakumar (Karnataka), V D Satheesan (Kerala), A Revanth Reddy (Telangana) and Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu (Himachal Pradesh) — also participated in the meeting.
On Wednesday, the top leaders of the INDIA bloc will meet to finalise an action plan for a joint agitation over alleged irregularities in the SIR exercise and to press for the CEC’s resignation. A draft notice to move a motion in the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha seeking the removal of the CEC would be deliberated upon for approval at the meeting, sources added.
Besides the top Congress leadership, TMC’s Mamata Banerjee and Abhishek Banerjee, and leaders from parties such as the SP, the CPI, the CPI(M), the NCP(SP) and the Shiv Sena (UBT), among others, will participate in the meeting. The DMK and the AAP will not be part of the meeting.
