Patna: Rahul Gandhi launched a fresh attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Central government, accusing them of attempting to “steal votes of the poor” through the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Bihar.
Having stirred a hornet’s nest earlier this month by claiming that the Election Commission of India (ECI) was colluding with the BJP to carry out ‘vote theft’, the Congress leader said on Sunday that the SIR exercise was an “institutionalised method to steal votes,” carried out with the backing of ECI.
“The Narendra Modi government… after privatising public sector units… now wants to steal votes of the poor through the SIR with the help of the Election Commission,” Rahul said while addressing a rally in Araria as part of his ongoing ‘Voter Adhikar Yatra’ in Bihar.
“In Bihar, SIR is an institutionalised way for vote theft. Lakhs of voters’ names were deleted; the Opposition is complaining, but the BJP hasn’t complained even once because there is a partnership between ECI, the election commissioner and the BJP,” the Leader of Opposition said.
“We are finding people in Bihar who are alive but declared dead in the voter list, affecting their votes,” Rahul claimed.
Describing the Election Commission as “election omission”, Rahul reiterated that the move was unconstitutional as it targeted the marginalised sections of society ahead of Assembly elections in Bihar which are due in October-November.
“The INDIA bloc will not allow this to happen in Bihar. The Constitution guarantees equal rights to every citizen of the country… the SIR is anti-constitutional. People of Bihar will give a befitting reply to the BJP and its allies in the assembly polls,” Rahul said later at a media interaction where he was joined by INDIA bloc leaders like RJD’s Tejashwi Prasad Yadav, CPI(ML) Liberation’s Dipankar Bhattacharya and VIP’s Mukesh Sahni.
