Pointing to alleged discrepancies in the figures issued by the Election Commission post-special intensive revision in Bihar, the Trinamool Congress asked the central panel whether the SIR was a “backdoor disenfranchisement exercise.”
The Trinamool shared three press notes released by the EC, with the last two coming back-to-back on July 22 and 23.
“On July 22, the number of untraceable electors stood at 11, 484 (0.01 per cent). By July 23, that number suddenly exploded to one lakh,” the Trinamool said in a post on its X.
The note released on July 23 revealed of the total 98.01 per cent of voters covered in the process, 20 lakh voters were reported deceased, another 28 lakh had migrated and seven lakh were enrolled in multiple constituencies.
“At 88.18 per cent voter coverage, the count of electors marked for deletion was 35 lakh. Now with 98.01 per cent coverage, this figure has skyrocketed to 56 lakh. That means in the next 77.62 lakh electors surveyed, 21 lakh have been pushed for deletion,” the Trinamool said.
After the Maharashtra state polls, the leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha and Congress MP from Rae Bareilly, Rahul Gandhi had raised the issue of voters being added to the list in the months between the Lok Sabha polls of last year and the state Assembly polls.
The Congress and later the Trinamool Congress have alleged the EC is working to help the BJP in tiding over electoral deficiencies in states where it is not in power.
The Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee has already stated SIR will be implemented in Bengal to aid the BJP to win next year's Assembly polls.
The Trinamool, which had flagged the issue of duplicate voters in Bengal apprehending genuine voters will get disenfranchised, asked the central poll panel, “Who are these voters being erased? Why this overnight manipulation in numbers? Is this a backdoor disenfranchisement exercise?”
The SIR exercise in Bihar has come barely six months after a voter revision exercise was completed in January this year, where the number of migrated voters was reported to be around 1. 91 lakh voters. The number now stands at 28 lakh.
Though the chief election commissioner Gyanesh Kumar defended the SIR on Thursday in a chat with the media, these discrepancies have not yet been answered.
“The EC owes the people of India an immediate, transparent and public clarification. Silence is not an option when democracy is being quietly sabotaged,” the Trinamool said.