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Congress has called the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls a plot to that the party's own 1993 record with Chief Election Commissioner T.N. Seshan weakens its claim to defend the Commission's independence. Rahul Gandhi and his party have found a new villain to prove that they are still relevant as opposition. It is the Election Commission of India. They say the Special Intensive Revision of the electoral rolls is a plot. They call it "vote chori". They say it robs citizens of their vote. Some of them even want the Chief Election Commissioner to resign. It is a loud campaign. It is also a short-sighted one. Congress is the last party that should lecture anyone on the independence of the Election Commission. Its own record tells a different story. The man who scared them Go back to 1990. T. N. Seshan became Chief Election Commissioner. He did what few before him had dared. He enforced the Model Code of Conduct without fear. He cracked down on booth capturing. He stopped ministers from using government machinery to win votes. He made photo identity cards a reality. Politicians hated him. Every party felt the heat. But it was the Congress government at the Centre that acted. In 1993, the government of P. V. Narasimha Rao changed the structure of the commission. It had always been led by one man. Now it would have three members. The two new commissioners had equal powers. Decisions would be taken by majority. Look at the timing. Seshan was at the peak of his influence. The government was tired of being told no. Seshan saw the move for what it was. He went to the Supreme Court. The court upheld the new structure in 1995. The three-member commission stands to this day. Congress may call this reform. Most people who watched at the time called it an attempt to clip the wings of a strong umpire. The party that now cries foul Now compare that with today. Congress leaders speak as if they have always been guardians of the commission. They call it a puppet. They compare their struggle to the fight for freedom. They demand resignations. Where was this love for institutions in 1993? When an independent chief election commissioner became inconvenient, Congress cut him down to size. When the commission does a routine job today, Congress screams conspiracy. That is the definition of double standards. What SIR really is Let us be clear about what this exercise is. The revision of electoral rolls is not new. The law requires it. Its purpose is simple. Remove the names of the dead. Remove duplicate entries. Remove people who have moved elsewhere. Add new voters who are eligible. India is a vast country. People migrate for work. They marry and change homes. They die, and their names stay on the list for years. Any honest clean-up will remove many names. That is not a scandal. That is the job. The commission has said again and again that a wrongly deleted voter can apply to be added back. Booth Level Officers are available in every area. Online portals are open. Citizens can check their entries and correct them. So ask the Congress a plain question. If your voters are being deleted, where are the names? Where are the cases? Show them to the commission. Show them to the courts. A slogan is not evidence. What about those bogus voters, the Guspethias who were crying on the top of their voices, standing at the India-Bangladesh border, crying that we want to go back & we have voted in India several times but now we have to go back as the things have changed & more than 180 km of open borders will be sealed soon. Everyone saw those long queues of Guspethias patronised by TMC & Congress waiting to go back... The question they cannot answer Here is the biggest hole in their argument. They say names are being deleted to help the BJP. But how would the commission know who votes for whom? The voter list has no column for party choice. There is no tag that says "Congress voter". The ballot is secret. That is the whole point of it. To delete opponents on purpose, someone would have to know who they are. Congress has never explained this. It cannot. The theory falls apart the moment you think about it for a minute. Voters are not fooled The public is not buying it. Talk to ordinary people, and you hear the same thing. They want clean rolls. Fewer fake names mean a fairer contest. That helps every honest party. Many voters have already fixed their own entries. They went to the Booth Level Officer or used the online portal. They found it slow at times, but it worked. They do not feel like victims of a plot & are not buying Congress's baseless allegations. Assam is a good example. The state saw the same claims from Congress. Once the Election Commission explained the process, the allegations lost their force. Union Minister Pabitra Margherita made the point well when he said Assam had rejected Congress on SIR. Baseless attacks on institutions, he said, had become part of a political culture. People are tired of it. Every time Congress loses, it finds a new reason. First it was the voting machines. Now it is the voter list. Never once does it ask what went wrong in its own campaign, its own organisation or its own message. The cry that lost its meaning "Democracy is in danger," Congress says it before every election and after every defeat. Each time, the words mean a little less. Democracy was in real danger when the Emergency was imposed in 1975. Newspapers were censored. Opposition leaders were jailed. Courts were pressured. That was done by a Congress government. The party has no right to use the language of democratic crisis whenever it wants a headline. A mature opposition would do the hard work. It would send its workers door to door. It would find real errors and file real complaints. It would go to court with names and numbers. That is how a serious party behaves. Shouting "vote chori" from a stage is not the same as proving it. What the BJP believes Those are reasonable demands. The BJP has no problem with them. We want every eligible Indian to vote. We also want every fake name gone. No Guspethias to do bogus voting. What we reject is the idea that any clean-up of the rolls is an attack on democracy. It is the opposite. A dirty voter list is what weakens democracy. A clean one protects it. On appointments, the law of 2023 set up a selection panel that includes the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition and a Union minister. The Leader of the Opposition has a seat and a voice at the table. That is a long way from the old practice, under which the government of the day simply picked the chief. Congress used that old practice for decades and never once complained. Consistency is the test Institutions do not survive because they are free from criticism. They survive because they are judged by one standard, no matter who is in power. Congress fails that test. It cut down a strong commissioner when it held the Centre. Now it attacks the commission because it lost elections. It praises the umpire when it wins and abuses him when it loses. If Congress truly cares about the Election Commission, it should start with honesty. Admit what happened in 1993. Bring evidence, not slogans. Fight elections with ideas and work on the ground. Until then, its outrage will sound exactly like what it is. It is a party looking for someone to blame. (The author is a spokesperson for the BJP. For feedback or further correspondence, the author can be reached at: abhijeetjasrotia5@gmail.com.)
Source: Rising Kashmir
