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A group of citizens comprising former judges, retired bureaucrats and veteran armed forces officers has criticised Congress leader Rahul Gandhi for unleashing what they claimed was “impotent rage born out of repeated electoral failure” to tarnish the dignity of the Election Commission of India (ECI).
In a joint statement, these 272 personalities said that the Leader of the Opposition in Lok Sabha has repeatedly attacked the Election Commission over accusations of “vote theft” using “unbelievably uncouth rhetoric” and claiming that he would “hound” officers when they superannuate from the poll authority.
“Yet, despite such scathing accusations, there has been no formal complaint filed by him, along with the prescribed sworn affidavit, to escape his accountability for levelling unsubstantiated allegations and threatening public servants in the performance of their duty,” it said.
They claimed that several senior figures of Congress and other political parties, leftist NGOs, ideologically opinionated scholars, and a few attention seekers in other walks of life, have joined Gandhi with similarly blistering rhetoric against the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) and even declared that the Commission has descended into complete shamelessness by acting like the “B-team of the BJP”.
“Such fiery rhetoric may be emotionally powerful - but it collapses under scrutiny, because the ECI has publicly shared its SIR methodology, overseen verification by court-sanctioned means, removed ineligible names in a compliant manner, and added new eligible voters,” the statement said.
It is alleged that the actions of the Leader of the Opposition suggest that the accusations against the EC were an attempt to cloak political frustration in the garb of institutional crisis.
