New Delhi Amid a raging row over the special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Bihar, senior Congress leader P Chidambaram has claimed that 6.5 lakh migrant workers were added as voters in Tamil Nadu, calling it alarming and illegal. The Rajya Sabha MP said the SIR exercise in Bihar was getting “curiouser” by the day.
The Congress leader has sought to link it with the addition of voters in Tamil Nadu, which goes to polls next year and faces the prospect of a similar Bihar-like exercise. While 65 lakh voters are in danger of being disenfranchised in Bihar, report of adding 6.5 lakh persons as voters in Tamil Nadu is alarming and patently illegal,” the former Home Minister tweeted, tagging the state’s Chief Minister’s Office (CMO).
Chidambaram questioned why should a migrant worker not return to Bihar or their home state to vote in the respective state assembly elections.
A person to be enrolled as a voter must have a fixed and permanent legal home. The migrant worker has such a home in Bihar (or another state). How can he/she be enrolled as a voter in Tamil Nadu? he said. The senior Congress leader, who has vehemently criticised the recent voter list revision exercise in poll-bound Bihar, accused the ECI of “abusing” its powers.
This is a problem in Tamil Nadu as they came to work here as guest workers. But giving them voter IDs in Tamil Nadu will result in political change in the future,” DMK general secretary Duraimurugan told reporters. The opposition’s main concern over the SIR in BIhar is that it would disenfranchise a large number of the 7.89 crore existing electors in Bihar. The Election Commission has stated that large-scale additions and deletions to the electoral rolls over the last 20 years have increased the possibility of duplicate entries in the roll.
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