Murmurs of discontent with the Election Commission’s push for the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls in poll-bound Bihar can be heard from within Janata Dal United (JDU), the BJP’s partner in the Centre and the state.
The JDU MP from Bihar’s Banka Giridhari Yadav on Wednesday said it took him 10 days to collect all the documents enlisted by the central poll panel for the SIR, which was launched earlier this month and has seen protests from the Opposition parties.
“This (SIR) has been forcefully imposed on us. At least six months’ time should have been given for this,” Yadav told the media outside the Parliament, adding that he was expressing his personal views. “It doesn’t matter what the party is saying. This is the truth. If I can’t say the truth, why have I become an MP?”
On Tuesday, the Election Commission (EC) had stated it had identified 18 lakh voters in Bihar as deceased, 26 lakh have moved to other constituencies and seven lakh duplicate voters. Of the 7, 89, 69, 844 voters in the state – which is likely to go to polls in October or November this year – around 97.30 per cent or 76, 834, 228 voters had filled the fresh enumeration forms issued by the poll officials.
“Election Commission has no practical knowledge. It neither knows the history nor the geography of Bihar. It took 10 days for me to collect all the documents. My son stays in America. How will he do the signatures in just a month?” asked the Banka MP.
The Banka MP is not the only voice from the BJP ally to have spoken out against the EC’s drive.
The Parbatta MLA from the JDU, Sanjeev Kumar also questioned the procedure.
“The migrant labourers who are working in other state, how will they appear for verification? They will be ousted from the electoral rolls. The EC should have made adequate arrangements to ensure that no genuine voter’s name is deleted for logistic reasons. There are no intruders in my constituency. If not conducted properly, the SIR process will have adverse impact on all of us,” Kumar said.
After Parliament was adjourned this morning, the opposition members led by the leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi staged protest outside the building on the SIR process in Bihar.
“The protest (against SIR) will continue until the Election Commission listens,” said Congress MP Rajeev Shukla.
Both the Houses were later adjourned for the day because of protests over Bihar’s SIR exercise and Operation Sindoor.
In the Bihar Assembly, too, the Opposition leaders held a protest against SIR.
The Bihar Assembly has also witnessed arguments on the pros and cons of the exercise from the treasury and opposition benches.
“The voter list was published in February. After the Lok Sabha elections (of 2024) a revision could have been done. They are rushing everything now. Where will the poor get so many documents in 25 days,” asked Tejashwi Yadav, RJD leader and Raghopur MLA.
Citing labour ministry data, Tejashwi said, registered migrant workers from Bihar were around three crore and another 1.3crore unregistered ones.
“They return to their homes before every election to vote. It is feared that the EC will delete their names from the list now,” Tejashwi said.
