The opposition INDIA alliance in Bihar on Friday rejected the Election Commission's (EC) suggested intensive reverification of electoral rolls in time for the state assembly polls. Averment to this effect was made at a joint press conference here addressed by Rashtriya Janata Dal leader Tejashwi Yadav, Congress' media and publicity department head Pawan Khera and CPI(ML) general secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya, among others.
"We believe that this exercise, which targets documents from voters very few may have, is designed to disenfranchise large masses— particularly those belonging to underprivileged sections of society," accused Tejashwi Yadav, a former Deputy CM and now the opposition leader. He claimed, "Once names are removed from the voters' list, the next phase could be denying these people the benefits of social welfare schemes".
The young leader said, "It is not possible for the EC to carry out such a massive exercise in 25 days, as it has suggested. If, of course, it is possible at all, I would challenge the Centre to conduct the caste census in two months flat".
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Addressing the occasion, Khera stated, "Mahatma Gandhi's three monkeys saw, heard and spoke no evil. The EC sees, hears and speaks no truth. When our party leader Rahul Gandhi questioned how assembly elections were conducted in Maharashtra, the Bharatiya Janata Party provided the counter argument." He also asserted that Bihar was a "laboratory" for the EC and the same experiments could be carried out elsewhere in the nation.
Bhattacharya, who had written to the EC expressing his protest a day earlier, said the suggested exercise would be a "logistical nightmare".
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