The Left Democratic Front government and the Opposition United Democratic Front have decided to mount a legal challenge to the special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Kerala.

The state BJP leadership told an all-party meeting called by the chief electoral officer of Kerala in Thiruvananthapuram on Wednesday that the SIR has to be implemented at any cost.

Rathan U. Khelkar, the Kerala CEO, told the leaders attending the meeting that he would go ahead with the SIR process and maintained that the local body elections, due in December, would not be affected.

The CPM and Congress leaderships iterated that the SIR and the local body elections cannot go hand in hand. They alleged that the Centre wanted to implement the Citizenship Amendment Act against the backdrop of
the SIR.

Both parties recalled that they had unanimously passed a resolution in the Kerala Assembly against the SIR. They said that the Kerala CEO should go to New Delhi and meet the chief election commissioner to apprise him about the parties’ disapproval of the decision to implement the SIR at this juncture.

Former Thiruvananthapuram district president of the BJP, S. Suresh, who represented the party at the all-party meeting, urged the CEO not to accept the demands of the Congress and the CPM.

“It’s mysterious that the CPM and the Congress have joined hands against this cause,” Suresh said.

The CPM was represented by senior leader M.V. Jayarajan, who said the party was planning to be a party to the cases against the SIR in the Supreme Court.

Congress state president Sunny Joseph urged the LDF government that the CPM should also be a party to the case in the Supreme Court.

Khelkar, the CEO, said the apprehensions about the SIR were unwarranted as
it would not affect the smooth conduct of the local body elections.