New Delhi, Aug 16 (PTI) The Congress on Saturday hit back at the Election Commission, accusing it of having “crossed all limits of shamelessness”, and said it is expected to the epitome of probity.
Congress general secretary, Organisation, K C Venugopal said if the Election Commission welcomed the scrutiny of electoral rolls, the chief election commissioner (CEC) and other election commissioners must come clean on why they still refuse to provide parties with machine-readable electoral rolls and CCTV footage.
“The ECI has crossed all limits of shamelessness by shrugging all its responsibilities in the face of grave allegations of vote theft and mass rigging. Constitutional authorities are expected to be the epitome of probity – not hide behind vaguely drafted press notes to hide their guilt in destroying democracy,” Venugopal said in a post on X.
Seeking to counter opposition parties’ allegations of fudging in voter data, the Election Commission has said it seems that some political parties did not examine the electoral rolls at the “appropriate time” to point out errors to the poll machinery and noted that it welcomes a scrutiny of the document to help its officials remove flaws.
Venugopal said the onus on catching the scale and volume of their vote theft cannot be on political parties and its BLAs.
He said the ECI claims “utmost transparency is the hallmark of electoral roll preparation”.
“We wish to ask ECI if any of these decisions are part of their agenda of promoting ‘utmost transparency’: Denying machine-readable rolls to parties; and taking down already uploaded machine-readable versions of the draft SIR rolls. Deleting CCTV footage within 45 days. Submitting before the Supreme Court that it is not bound to disclose the reason behind deleting 65 lakh names in the Bihar SIR process and refusing to meet opposition MPs marching to meet the ECI,” Venugopal said.
Sharing the EC’s press note, the Congress leader said the tone and tenor of the EC’s note raises greater suspicions that the ECI will take no steps to address the public’s grave concerns about the alleged “mass scale vote-rigging done by the BJP-controlled ECI”.
“If the ECI ‘welcomes the scrutiny of electoral rolls’, the Chief Election Commissioner and other ECs must come clean on why they still refuse to provide parties with machine-readable electoral rolls and why CCTV footage is being deleted,” he said.
In a statement, the EC said the period for raising claims and objections after the draft voters’ list is published is the appropriate time for parties to flag flaws.
“It seems that some political parties and their booth level agents (BLAs) did not examine the electoral rolls at the appropriate time and did not point out errors, if any…,” it said.
The EC noted that recently, some political parties and individuals raised issues about errors in the electoral rolls, including the electoral rolls prepared in the past. PTI SKC MNK MNK
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