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Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee (TPCC) president Mahesh Kumar Goud on Friday, September 25, said the party would organise protests against the Election Commission’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) at all district headquarters across the state on September 28.
Mahesh Kumar demanded that the Election Commission clarify objections put forth by the two Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi, who had disagreed with Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar.
The TPCC president was referring to the investigative report published by The Indian Express on September 23. Among other things, the article discussed that Election Commissioners Sukhbir and Vivek had raised 14 objections pertaining to electoral roll revisions over the past 10 months and had disagreed with the CEC on multiple counts.
Mahesh Kumar said the objections covered by the two Commissioners were also issues faced by electors including those in Telangana. The TPCC president said the reported objections to the changes proposed in Form 6, used by citizens seeking voter registration, required a detailed explanation from the ECI especially considering the dissenting Commissioners had pointed out the lack of legal standing to do so.
The TPCC chief also questioned the accountability of Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) in the process of updating electoral records. He said every alteration to voter data should be backed by a clear audit trail, identifying the official who made the change, the date and the stated reason, as well as the authority under which it was carried out.
He called on the Election Commission of India (ECI) to disclose detailed, state-wise and constituency-wise data on deletions made from the draft electoral rolls during the SIR exercise. The disclosure, he said, should include the grounds cited for each deletion, the objections filed against them, and the number of names that were later reinstated.
Senior Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Thursday, September 24 had called for the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar and said that he had enough information to prove with certainty that the ECI’s actions under him had seriously damaged the voting system in India.
