The Congress on Thursday announced a nearly two-week-long protest march in Bihar led by Rahul Gandhi, Tejashwi Yadav and other Opposition leaders against the special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, as alleged instances of prominent personalities possessing two voter cards continued to surface in the state.
The announcement of the march came on a day the Election Commission served notices to LJP (Ram Vilas) MP Veena Devi and her husband Dinesh Singh, a JDU MLC, for allegedly possessing two voter identity cards each after Tejashwi flagged it on X.
On Wednesday, the RJD leader had drawn attention to the case of Muzaffarpur mayor and BJP leader Nirmala Devi allegedly having two voter IDs, which prompted the Election Commission to serve a similar notice.
Congress general secretary (organisation) K.C. Venugopal said Rahul, along with Tejashwi and other Mahagathbandhan leaders, "will embark on the Voter Adhikar Yatra across Bihar from August 17 to August 30". The Yatra will seek to build a sustained campaign around Rahul's "vote theft" charges against the BJP.
The rally will cover over 50 Assembly constituencies in the poll-bound state to mobilise public opinion against the SIR. "Those who have conspired to steal our vote and destroy our hard-fought democratic system will be punished by the people," Venugopal said on X.
He said the Yatra would commence with a mega rally in Sasaram in south Bihar on August 17 and culminate with another big rally in Patna's Gandhi Maidan on September 1, with breaks in between.
The instances of one person having two voter cards with addresses of two different places have led many to cast aspersions on the SIR process.
"Late-night revelation regarding fraud in the voter list…. Mrs Veena Devi is an NDA MP from Vaishali. She possesses two different EPIC IDs…. She has two different votes in two different Lok Sabha constituencies in two different districts," Tejashwi posted on X on Wednesday night, along with purported pictures from the draft electoral rolls.
On Thursday morning, he followed up with a similar allegation against the MP's husband, Dinesh Singh, a JDU lawmaker. Tejashwi shared pictures of voter rolls that purports to show that Singh was registered as a voter in two Assembly segments.
"Is this not electoral fraud by the EC to ensure the NDA's victory? Will the Election Commission accept the irregularities and mistakes in the SIR?" Tejashwi asked. After his X post, the electoral registration officer sent notices to Veena and Dinesh to clarify their stand.
Veena sought to blame EC officials, claiming that she had submitted a form for deletion of her name from the electoral rolls in Muzaffarpur. "I am a registered voter in the Sahebganj Assembly seat. I don't know how my name has appeared on the Muzaffarpur list despite my application for deletion," she told reporters.
EC challenged
The Opposition has also contested the EC's assertion of "zero" claims and objections being filed by political parties over the draft electoral rolls. Tejashwi and the CPIML-Liberation have accused the EC of "not accepting and acknowledging" the objections filed by their booth-level agents (BLAs).
"Our BLAs and officials complain to the EC every day, but they neither accept the complaints nor provide any acknowledgement. Yet, they issue press releases daily claiming that political parties have not lodged any complaints," Tejashwi said. "In lying, the EC has even surpassed Prime Minister Modi," the RJD leader added, stressing that he had never seen anything like this.
