NEW DELHI: With SIR again in controversy, Congress on Tuesday warned that the “hasty” electoral review would cost the democratic rights of the poor and vulnerable sections in big numbers as it accused the Election Commission of running the exercise in an adhoc manner with constant updates and new directions to BLOs.Congress spokesperson Sasikanth Senthil questioned the statement of home minister Amit Shah that SIR is being done to remove illegal immigrants, asking why is the home minister clarifying on an issue that EC should be speaking on. “Is EC operating under the home minister?” he asked.He said 97 lakh names have been left out in Tamil Nadu which does not have any “infiltrators”, and the duplicate names are generally of migrants who keep moving. He argued that SIR is like a census which seeks to create voters’ list from scratch, which is the reason it was done over two years and in a staggered manner in the past, unlike the present tight deadline of a month or two. He said weaker sections and migrants will be left out of voters’ lists in big numbers after the present SIR.Senthil said Bihar continues to have 14.5 lakh duplicate voters despite SIR, which shows the hasty and unplanned execution of the exercise. He said EC had for years been using a “de-duplication software” to identify duplicate voters, but suddenly decided to drop its use for SIR in Bihar. Referring to media reports to make the charge, Senthil said EC again made a U-turn and decided to reintroduce the software for the ongoing SIR in 12 states. He said such abrupt actions are creating doubts in the minds of people, especially when huge numbers like 97 lakh are left out of the preliminary rolls in Tamil Nadu.The MP said, “We find this whole process very fishy. EC needs to come out with proper reasoning of why this has happened.”Senthil said ground reports and experiences of elected representatives show that EC is conducting SIR in a hasty manner, without proper training to BLOs. He said while the whole process is underway, the BLO app is being updated by some new protocol every day.
