The Congress on Friday said electoral democracy in the country faces the "gravest of threats" from the current dispensation and urged the Supreme Court to take firm steps to restore its integrity and accountability.

In a post on X, Congress general secretary K C Venugopal said the Supreme Court is entrusted with the responsibility of ensuring that injustice is not done and the free and fair nature of elections is protected.

"Electoral democracy in our country faces the gravest of threats from the Modi-Shah regime," he said in his post while releasing a copy of the letter written to the Chief Justice of India (CJI) by various opposition parties.

He said that on June 28, 23 opposition parties, along with an Independent MP, wrote to the CJI on the flawed SIR process, the "partisan role" of the Election Commission of India and other election-related issues.

"It is the role of our judiciary to guard our democracy from the excesses of the executive - especially one which is hell-bent on destroying the Constitutional framework that gives us our democracy.

"In our democracy, the Supreme Court is entrusted with the onerous responsibility of ensuring injustice doesn't prevail. Therefore, it has a vital role to play in protecting the free and fair nature of elections, and also to make sure that they seen to be free and fair. Without this, injustice against 1.4 billion voters persists every single day," he said in his post.

"We are releasing this letter, in the interest of transparency, and in the hope that the Hon'ble Supreme Court will take the firm steps urgently required to restore the integrity and accoutability of and faith in the election process of crores of our people," Venugopal said.

The letter by the INDIA bloc claimed that since 2014, appointments to the Election Commission have increasingly involved individuals perceived to be close to the ruling establishment, raising questions about the institution's independence.

The letter, signed by leaders including Rahul Gandhi, Mallikarjun Kharge, Mamata Banerjee, Akhilesh Yadav and others, claims that the SIR exercise was first launched in Bihar under the stated objective of cleaning up electoral rolls and ensuring that only eligible voters remained on the lists.

According to the Opposition, the rationale behind the exercise was linked to allegations of illegal Bangladeshi infiltration into Bihar's voter rolls. However, the leaders of the Opposition claimed that after that after the Bihar Assembly elections, no evidence had been made public by the Election Commission to substantiate claims of large-scale infiltration or illegal acquisition of voting rights by Bangladeshi nationals.

The voter-roll revision has been alleged as "ill-timed" and that its implementation became a "monumental disaster".

"The documentation process, adopted for the first time, was inherently exclusionary and politically motivated. Verification of voters based on filling forms and production of documents, questioning citizenship, left voters disenfranchised. Lakhs of voters did not possess the required documents. Many of them did not have the capacity to fill forms and forward them as mandated. This was particularly true of those who are poor, uneducated, including Dalits, Adivasis, members of the minority community and migrant workers," the letter stated.

The Opposition also pointed to the recently concluded Bengal Assembly elections, alleging that the revision process and large-scale deployment of Central Armed Police Forces created conditions that favoured the BJP.

"It was apparent that the West Bengal Government was under siege with the presence of 2 lakh 40 thousand CAPF personnel. To put this in context, 3 lakh 50 thousand CAPF personnel were deployed for the entire Lok Sabha election in 2024," adding, "There was also a massive deletion of names from the electoral rolls...This devious ploy alone left 27 lakh people without the right to vote."

The letter cited tribunal findings that claimed "One of the 19 Tribunals hearing the appeals headed by Justice T.S. Sivagnanam, found that of the 1777 names deleted for which appeals were heard by him, 1717 were wrongly deleted."

They also alleged misuse of central agencies such as the CBI, ED and NIA against Opposition parties.

Highlighting the significance of the joint initiative, TMC leader Derek O'Brien noted that this was "the first time since five meetings of the INDIA bloc have been held" that parties opposed to the BJP had jointly signed a common letter or document.