New Delhi: The Congress on Thursday called the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls a conspiracy run by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah, and demanded that Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar be removed.
Jairam Ramesh, the party's general secretary in charge of communications, put a number on the table. In the six states where the exercise has been completed or is under way — Karnataka, Jharkhand, Meghalaya, Kerala, Goa and Mizoram — at least 1,600 suspected foreign nationals were detected, he said, citing reports. Nearly 10 crore people went through the SIR in those states.
In Karnataka alone, 99.7 lakh names have been deleted and 716 foreign nationals were identified, 545 of them from Nepal, Ramesh said. "Nearly 10 crore people went through the SIR in these states — to find 1,600 'foreigners'," he wrote on X.
He also said the other 20 states and Union Territories had not supplied such figures because the Election Commission had not asked for the data, and accused the home minister of lying. "Gyanesh Kumar has to go. SIR has to be suspended. ECINET has to be revamped," he said, listing three demands.
The commission has defended the exercise. In a 248-page affidavit to the Supreme Court it said the SIR was authorised by law, that its orders were approved unanimously by all three members, and that Form 6 had not been amended — only the additional declaration attached to it, to introduce "mapping".
Dissent inside the commission is now part of the record. Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi have recorded objections at least 14 times in the past 10 months, mostly over the SIR, according to reports. The commission has said differing views are part of any institution's deliberations and that its orders carry full legal sanction.
Hearing petitions against the Delhi SIR on Wednesday, the Supreme Court said it had not yet decided whether "logical discrepancy" is a valid ground for deletion, and that the Bihar judgment did not settle that question. It asked the commission to consider letting deleted Delhi voters who missed the enumeration form submit it. The commission said it would extend the October 30 deadline. The matter returns to court in two weeks.
Of 1,45,10,299 electors in Delhi when the SIR began, 97,53,577 submitted enumeration forms. 47,56,722 did not. 19,34,243 were served notices over logical discrepancy.