A delegation of 11 opposition parties, led by Congress leader Abhishek Manu Singhvi, met with the Election Commission of India (ECI) on Wednesday to strongly oppose the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Bihar and said that it’s a “worst attack on the basic structure of the Constitution.”
Singhvi met Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar and Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi and questioned the timing of the SIR exercise, noting that it is being carried out only months before the upcoming Assembly elections.
“Firstly, the last revision was in 2003. For 22 years, more than four of five Bihar elections have happened. Were all those elections faulty?… Secondly the Special Intensive Revision which was held in 2003, was held one year before the Lok Sabha Elections, two years before the Assembly election. Today you are having in July, a maximum period of one or two months for an electoral revision exercise of the second most largest electoral populated state in India, Bihar…You want to have it in one and a half to two months,” the Congress leader said, ANI reported.
The delegation included representatives from various parties, such as the Communist Party of India, CPI (Marxist-Leninist), Samajwadi Party, Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar), Rashtriya Janata Dal, and Congress. Abhishek Manu Singhvi cautioned that such a rushed revision process could distort the electoral rolls and called it a direct threat to constitutional democracy.
“This enfranchisement is the worst attack on the basic structure of the Constitution. Today, every word counts, even if you wrongfully delete or wrongfully add a single voter, it is creating a non-level playing field that affects democracy and elections. This violates the basic structure of the Constitution,” Singhvi added.
The ECI has claimed that the SIR is only meant to verify voters and to identify any ‘ineligible voters’ ahead of the Assembly elections which are expected to be held later this year in Bihar.
(With ANI inputs)
