Bhubaneswar: Biju Janata Dal (BJD) president Naveen Patnaik on Friday demanded the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar and called for a rethink of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) process of electoral rolls.
Speaking to reporters outside the Assembly, the former Odisha chief minister sought Gyanesh Kumar’s resignation citing reported differences among members of the Election Commission.
“Because of strong differences between various Election Commissioners, the Chief Election Commissioner should immediately resign and the whole SIR process should be thoroughly revisited. The BJD has been against this SIR process from the beginning and we shall take it up very strongly,” said Naveen, who is the leader of opposition (LoP) in Odisha Assembly.
The BJD chief’s demand came days after national media reported that Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had formally raised objections at least 14 times over a period of 10 months to certain decisions and orders concerning the functioning of the EC.
According to the report, the objections related to issues including voter registration, deletion and restoration of names, changes to Form 6 and the management of the electoral-roll database. The two commissioners reportedly said that some decisions or communications issued in the name of the Election Commission were made without their knowledge or approval.
Notably, the SIR has emerged as a major political issue, with the Election Commission undertaking an exercise to revise electoral rolls across several states and Union Territories. The Indian Express reported that the exercise had resulted in more than 13 crore names being removed from draft rolls across 30 states and Union Territories.
The BJD supremo also came down heavily on the BJP over the MMDR Amendment Act and questioned the support extended to the legislation by the party’s 20 MPs from Odisha.
“As far as the MMDR Act is concerned, why blame others when 20 Lok Sabha MPs from Odisha belonging to the BJP supported this Bill in Parliament? The BJD will take this up strongly with the state government and ask it to pause and examine the issue, as this process could lead to a huge loss of revenue for the state,” the former CM said.