Congress has stepped up campaign against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar over Election Commission’s special intensive revision (SIR) of the voters’ lists. The party will conduct a nationwide agitation, titled “Vote Bachao, Desh Bachao” (Save the Vote, Save the Country), led by Rahul Gandhi and Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge. Congress has demanded that the names of eligible voters removed during the special revision be restored, that changes to the voters list be transparent, and that the Election Commission respond to its objections to the
Rahul Gandhi intensifies the attack on Gyanesh Kumar
Rahul Gandhi has raised a series of questions about the Election Commission and the removal of Kumar. His most recent comments pertain to changes to Form 6, the form required for voter registration. Gandhi claimed the modifications were illegal and what gained advantage to the BJP. The BJP dismissed the complaint as invalid. The court battle has also shifted to the legal frontier, with the Supreme Court set to hear a petition over the functioning of the Election Commission and the SIR process on charges that some of the decisions were taken without the opinion of the other Election Commissioner.
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Congress takes the campaign beyond Delhi.
Congress now plans to escalate the matter into a pan-India political movement. The party has announced protests across states and is raising a demand for the reinstatement of all eligible voters from the approx 13 crore names that it alleges were removed from the voters list. The CWC has demanded the scrapping of SIR and resignation of Gyanesh Kumar.
Why are the deleted names of voters at the heart of this debate?
It is not the number of names removed, but whether people who are entitled to vote have a meaningful opportunity to check whether they are on the list, and if not, to have their registration restored. The Election Commission had said that the SIR figures in draft electoral rolls need not be seen as the final figure of voters to be deleted.
Will Congress’s demands make a difference?
You will gauge the campaign’s effectiveness by events outside of political protests. Legal cases, the Election Commission’s reaction, validated voter names of disputed electoral rolls will be test indicators. The mobilisation across the country by Congress can, at the very least, drive electoral-roll transparency to the centre of public discourse. Meanwhile, the BJP has stood by the Election Commission and upbraided Congress for insulting constitutional authorities.
