Guwahati: Amidst ongoing protests by opposition parties in Bihar against the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, the Assam unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has expressed its full support for the exercise.
The state unit of the ruling party emphasized the necessity of weeding out “illegal voters” from the rolls.
Rupam Goswami, convenor of the Assam BJP’s state media department, thanked the Election Commission for initiating this “crucial process.”
He argued that a similar revision is vital for Assam to detect and remove “illegal voters” who were allegedly included in the electoral rolls by the Congress.
He maintained that during voter data collection in Bihar, the EC discovered a large number of foreign nationals from Bangladesh, Nepal and Myanmar.
“Most of these people are illegal migrants working as labourers, and over the years, they have allegedly managed to include their names in the voter list under political patronage,” Goswami claimed.
He noted that similar SIRs were conducted in various parts of the country over the years, including in Bihar in 2003.
He stated that the SIR process strengthens democracy at the constituency level by deleting illegal entries and adding new, eligible voters.
The BJP spokesperson criticised the Congress for opposing the exercise.
Asserting that the Congress was maintaining double standards, Goswami said in 2022, Randeep Surjewala (Congress) had filed a case in the Supreme Court arguing that linking Aadhaar with voter ID was unnecessary, and yet now the same party is demanding that Aadhaar be accepted as a valid document for voter enrolment.
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“The Congress, having relied on illegal Bangladeshi Muslim votes in past elections, is now apprehensive about losing its vote bank as these ineligible voters are being identified and removed through this revision. In contrast, during its rule, Congress went so far as to label lakhs of Gorkhas and indigenous communities as ‘D voters’ and suspended their voting rights,” Goswami alleged.
