‘Method of disenfranchising Indians’: Kharge slams SIR, calls it a ‘Frankenstein monster’ | India News
Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge on Monday stepped up his attack on the Election Commission’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, describing the exercise as a “Frankenstein Monster” after several prominent political and government figures were issued notices in Delhi.“What started as SIR from Bihar has now knocked on Delhi’s door, and perhaps now the powers-that-be are realizing why the Congress Party has been calling the entire process flawed from day one!” Kharge said in a post on X.“SIR is not just a tool used by the BJP for vote theft and dismantling democracy, it’s a flawed process that has turned into a Frankenstein Monster, now trapping its own people!!”Kharge referred to notices issued to BJP veteran Lal Krishna Advani, external affairs minister S Jaishankar, former vice-president Jagdeep Dhankhar, Delhi Lieutenant Governor, Rajya Sabha members, former Union ministers and other prominent figures. He also referred to an earlier controversy involving Bharat Ratna-winning scientist C N R Rao and former Navy chief Admiral Arun Prakash.The Congress president also questioned the Election Commission’s reference to “VIP/marked electors”, linking it to the constitutional principle of equal voting rights.“Is there now some Special Category of voters in India’s Universal Adult Franchise, VIP voters and ordinary voters?” Kharge asked. “Isn’t this a violation of the constitutional principle of One Person, One Vote, One Value? Has the VIP vote become more valuable now?”Kharge also cited the situation in West Bengal, where Election Commission data submitted before the Supreme Court showed that 1,26,194 appeals against exclusion had been decided. Of these, 1,13,943 voters were ordered to be restored to the electoral rolls, while 8,649 appeals were rejected. Kharge highlighted the fact that around 93 percent of the decided appeals had resulted in restoration.The figure, however, relates only to appeals decided so far and does not mean that 93 percent of all excluded voters were found to have been wrongly removed. More than 37 lakh appeals remained pending, according to the Election Commission data.SIR is an intensive revision of electoral rolls in which election officials verify existing electors and identify entries requiring correction, deletion or further verification. The exercise was first conducted in Bihar before being expanded to other states and Union territories. The process has faced political opposition and legal scrutiny over the verification criteria, documents required and safeguards available to voters.In Delhi, the draft electoral roll published on August 31 contained around 97.5 lakh electors. Around 33.13 lakh voters were identified for notices after their records could not be mapped to the previous intensive revision or were flagged for what officials described as logical discrepancies. More than 31.63 lakh notices had been served as of Sunday.
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Among those flagged were Advani, Jaishankar, Dhankhar, Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta, AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal, former deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia and several senior officials. Some cases have already been cleared after documents were verified.The Delhi CEO has maintained that receiving an SIR notice does not mean deletion from the electoral roll. The notices form part of the verification process, and voters are allowed to submit documents and make representations before any decision is taken. The final electoral roll is scheduled to be published on November 4.
