SIR protests gather steam ahead of SC hearing; Opposition widens agitation

A Bench of Chief Justice of India Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V Mohana are scheduled to hear on Monday a batch of pleas seeking the suspension of Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar for allegedly taking decisions, including those related to the Election Commission of India’s (ECI’s) special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, without the approval of other two Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi.

 

Protests against the CEC are likely to continue in the coming week as they did on Sunday for the third consecutive day. On Sunday, police barricaded parts of central Delhi to stop protesters from marching towards Jantar Mantar. Activists affiliated to political parties and students were detained by police personnel as they marched, raising slogans against alleged irregularities in the ECI’s functioning first flagged by an investigation in The Indian Express on September 23. It reported that Sandhu and Joshi had objected on record at least 14 times over the past 10 months to decisions and orders on the SIR process, which they said were issued without their knowledge or recommendation.

 

 

In Mumbai, Shiv Sena (UBT) chief Uddhav Thackeray led the protests, along with his cousin and Maharashtra Navanirman Sena chief Raj Thackeray. The Cockroach Janta Party, led by Abhijit Dipke, has announced plans to protest in Delhi on October 10. Opposition leaders have said they will march to the ECI headquarters on October 6.  Additionally, the Delhi units of parties belonging to the INDIA bloc will hold a joint protest outside the Delhi Election Commission office on October 7 against the SIR and demand the resignation of Gyanesh Kumar.

 

The Congress on Sunday cited Supreme Court judge Justice Ujjal Bhuyan’s remarks on the right to vote and claimed that his comments conclusively prove that the CEC has violated the Constitution both in letter and spirit. Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh shared a media report quoting Justice Bhuyan saying that if any process results in disenfranchisement of millions of Indian citizens, rendering them second-class citizens in their own country, devoid of voting rights, such a process is intrinsically arbitrary.

 

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) continued to defend the SIR process, reiterating that the names of 130 million voters have not been deleted as claimed by the Congress but flagged in the draft electoral roll under categories such as dead, absent, shifted or duplicate.