New Delhi: The BJP on Sunday said that over one crore duplicate entries and 2.8 crore names of deceased voters were removed from electoral rolls across 31 states and UTs under the SIR exercise, which is “exposing the rot”, and those who benefited from dirty rolls are now crying foul.
The ruling party also slammed the Congress for “misleading” people on the issue of Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls and asked it to respond to its defeat in various elections by respecting democratic mandate, not with lies.
“Here’s a question nobody from the INDI Alliance wants to answer:
Who benefited from keeping these duplicate names on the rolls? If there was nothing to hide, why the panic over cleaning up voter lists?” the BJP said in a post on its X handle.
In another post, it said that 9.43 crore absent and shifted names have been identified and removed from electoral rolls. “That’s not a minor clean-up. That’s 9.92% of the total electorate on the rolls. Yet the INDI Alliance is opposing the very exercise that is meant to ensure accurate voter lists,” the BJP said.
It said 2.8 crore names of deceased voters were removed from electoral rolls across 31 states and UTs under the SIR exercise.
BJP spokesperson Sudhanshu Trivedi said the Election Commission, in its statement on Saturday, clearly stated that all major decisions, including SIR, were taken unanimously by all three election commissioners.
“Yet, the Congress is not shying away from misleading people and questioning the credibility of constitutional institutions like the Election Commission,” Trivedi said in a post on X.
The BJP leader said the Congress’s politics of “spreading lies and misinformation” against the constitutional institutions in frustration over its electoral defeats has now been fully exposed with the Election Commission’s statement.
“The response to defeat in the people’s court should be given through facts and respect for the democratic mandate, not lies,” he added.
