In response to Congress’s allegations that 89 lakh irregularity reports reported by the party’s Booth Level Agents (BLAs) during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral registers were rejected, Bihar’s Chief Electoral Officer issued a statement on Sunday. The Chief Electoral Officer explained in a formal statement that the party’s grievances were not filed in the proper legal manner.
Khera claimed earlier in the day that discrepancies raised questions about the EC’s intentions and called for a rerun of the entire procedure.
“The EC continues to receive false information from its sources claiming that no political party is filing complaints. In actuality, Khera stated at a press conference on Sunday that the Congress has sent the EC 89 lakh complaints about irregularities in the SIR.
“The EC rejected our BLAs’ objections when they attempted to file them. “The EC made it clear to our BLAs that only individuals, not political parties, could file complaints,” he continued, calling for a complete rerun of the SIR process.
The Senior Congress leader claims that the EC removed the names of 65 lakh Bihar voters from 90,540 polling places in the state.
Out of these totals, 22 lakh people’s names were removed because they are no longer living, and 25 lakh voters had their names removed because of migration. According to him, 9,70,000 voters’ names were removed since they were not present at the specified addresses.
There were 20,368 booths in total where more than 100 names were removed, and 1,988 booths where more than 200 names were removed. More than 70% of the women’s names were removed from 7,613 booths, Khera stated.
“To date, no BLA authorized by any district president of the Indian National Congress in Bihar has submitted any claim (Form 6) or objection (Form 7) on any name in the draft electoral rolls published on August 1 in the prescribed format thus far,” the Chief Electoral Officer said, simultaneously rejecting all of the claims.
In support of this procedure, the government also referenced a recent High Court decision that guarantees no voter will be struck from the list without cause or due process.
Since the Pradesh Congress Committee presidents’ applications are currently not in the required format, the Chief Electoral Officer has sent them to the relevant Electoral Registration Officers solely for their records, the Chief Electoral Officer stated.
“In this context, it is inappropriate that the Electoral Registration Officer, under Rule 20(3)(b) of the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960, will take an appropriate decision regarding deletion only after due verification and using their discretion before initiating the deletion process for approximately 89 lakh voters, which is a significantly large number,” the official statement continued.
