New Delhi : The opposition has raised questions over the functioning of the Election Commission following an Indian Express report that two of the three Election Commissioners had raised objections 14 times over the past 10 months regarding various aspects of the controversial Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise. Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav called on the Supreme Court to take suo motu cognisance of the matter, while Congress MP Manish Tewari alleged that there was an “invisible hand” running the Election Commission.
The three-member ECI is headed by CEC Gyanesh Kumar, who has faced severe criticism from the opposition over the SIR process. The SIR exercise to weed out ineligible and dead voters, which began in June last year with Bihar, has led to over 13 crore names being deleted from the draft rolls in 30 states and Union Territories so far. The maximum deletions have been in the Delhi and Maharashtra draft rolls. Around 91 lakh voters were deleted from the electoral rolls in Bengal following the SIR exercise. Last week, the ECI told the Supreme Court that 38 lakh appeals were pending before the tribunals.
The Express investigation revealed that Sukhbir Sandhu flagged this issue, questioning why the ECI appealed against voters whom judicial officers had included. Sandhu recorded that neither he nor Joshi nor the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) of West Bengal had been informed about the basis or process of filing the appeals. Calling it a “very serious” development, Akhilesh Yadav emphasised that the repeated disagreements suggested that the Election Commissioners were not able to perform their duties properly.
Congress MP Manish Tewari underscored that the report dented the credibility of the ECI. “If rules were not allegedly followed and decisions were taken that were not unanimous or by majority, then all the decisions of ECI are per se arbitrary and capricious if not completely illegal,” Tewari said.
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