Almost the entire Opposition upped the ante against the Election Commission on Monday, a day after the poll panel tried to browbeat those questioning the sanctity of the electoral rolls, the most crucial component for holding any elections.
In a rare show of unity, leaders from all the major opposition parties, those in the INDIA bloc and some from outside such as AAP – including regional arch-rivals – held a news conference at the Constitution Club of India in Delhi to reiterate their charges against the Election Commission.
“Action should be taken against past election commissioners for fraudulent voters lists, and dissolve Lok Sabha immediately,” said Mahua Moitra, Trinamool Lok Sabha MP from Krishnagar. “[Bengal] chief minister Mamata Banerjee had raised the issue of duplicate voter’s cards, but the issue is still unresolved.”
In Kolkata, the Trinamool general secretary and Diamond Harbour MP Abhishek Banerjee too said the same.
“The EC did not answer any of the questions raised by the opposition parties,” Abhishek said. “The Lok Sabha elections were held with this same voter list. If the EC says the electoral rolls are not sanitised, the cabinet should resign, conduct Special Intensive Revision of the electoral rolls and fresh elections be held.”
The Trinamool Congress on Monday filed a case in Calcutta High Court against the Election Commission for seeking information on block-level activists (BLAs) deployed by the parties during elections.
“They can seek this information a week or 10 days before the elections are held. Not when the elections are 10 months away. Is there any guarantee that the information provided to the EC will not fall in the hands of the BJP,” asked Abhishek.
Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha and Rae Bareli MP Rahul Gandhi, who is on a Vote Adhikar Yatra in Bihar against “vote theft”, wrote in a post on X: “Those people who participated in the last four to five elections, in Bihar their right to vote has been stolen. When we asked why, we were told orders came from above. This is the fight for the rights of the poor. We will not stop. We will put an end to vote theft.”
Both the Congress and the CPM said the EC was not acting in an impartial manner. When he had made his presentation on vote theft in a Bangalore constituency, Rahul had accused the EC of working in collusion with the BJP.
“EC is in the hands of officers who are taking sides,” Gaurav Gogoi, Congress MP from Jorhat and the party’s deputy leader in the Lok Sabha, said at the news meet in Delhi. “They are not probing any of the charges made by the Opposition. There is complete silence on voter additions in Maharashtra, the discrepancy in the electoral rolls in Karnataka and the deletion of video footage from the polling booths.
“They are running away from the questions raised by the Opposition and its [EC’s] responsibilities,” Gogoi added.
After Sunday's news meet by chief election commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, Samajwadi Party (SP) chief and Kannauj MP Akhilesh Yadav and Tamil Nadu chief minister M.K. Stalin have pointed to the questions left unanswered by the EC.
SP leader Ramgopal Yadav said that while the EC is asking Lok Sabha Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi to give an affidavit with his complaint, the SP had submitted affidavits with complaints of around 18,000 voters being removed from the list in 2022 but no action was taken.
"In the 2022 UP polls, when Akhilesh Yadav said names of SP supporters have been removed from the voter list, we gave affidavits, but no action has been taken," Tadav said.
The CPM’s Rajya Sabha MP John Brittas labelled the EC as the B-team of the BJP.
“It seems they have declared a war on the Opposition parties. The EC is biased, selective, unfair and has become the B-team of the BJP,” Brittas said.
When asked whether the Opposition was considering the possibility of boycotting elections, RJD Rajya Sabha member Manoj Jha said: “Let us not think of the extremes right now… The Constitution is for protection, it cannot be a shield for your defiance of constitutional morality.”
To the EC’s charge that the Opposition did not raise any objection to the draft electoral roll sent to the parties before being published, Jha said: “I have field-level data. When our block level activists go to the block level officers, they are told to return the next day or the day after.”
The DMK’s Tiruchi Siva demanded discussion on the floor of the Parliament.