Ranchi, Sep 28 (PTI) Congress workers on Monday gheraoed the CEO’s office here and staged demonstrations at district headquarters across Jharkhand, demanding the resignation of CEC Gyanesh Kumar.
Congress workers took out a march near the Old Assembly premises here, which culminated at the CEO’s office in Dhurwa.
During the march, hundreds of party workers carrying placards raised slogans such as “Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar resign” and “Shame on Gyanesh Kumar”.
They also burnt effigies of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah and the CEC.
“Kumar is acting as an agent of the BJP and is destroying the dignity of democracy. He is working to steal votes,” state Congress president Keshav Mahto Kamlesh alleged while speaking to PTI.
He alleged that the Election Commission had extended an “unfair” advantage to the BJP to help it secure victory in the Assembly polls in Bihar and West Bengal.
“Our leader Rahul Gandhi has placed evidence and facts before the entire country on how votes were stolen in Haryana and Maharashtra,” Kamlesh said.
“People who have the right to vote are being deprived by the EC through every possible means,” he alleged.
The party demanded the immediate resignation of the CEC, alleging that he had “torn apart the dignity of the Constitution”, the Jharkhand Congress chief said.
Former Jharkhand Pradesh Congress Committee (JPCC) president Rajesh Thakur alleged, “Those who murdered democracy have not yet been arrested.”
The party would continuously fight the battle “from the streets to Parliament and from Parliament to the judiciary”, he said.
“It’s not about one murder; it’s about the murder of 140 crore people. The murder of democracy is happening. In such a situation, we will not sit silently; our leader Rahul Gandhi had already said CEC is stealing votes, and his two election commissioners have proved it,” Thakur claimed.
After the protest outside the CEO’s office, a delegation of Congress leaders met CEO K Ravi Kumar and submitted a memorandum.
The leaders asked him to ensure that not a single eligible voter was removed from the electoral rolls.
“We met the CEO, K Ravi Kumar, and clearly stated in unequivocal terms that you should not work as an agent of a particular party like Kumar. We also raised issues of Jharkhand and asked him to ensure no eligible voters in the state should be removed from the voter list,” former JPCC working president Bandhu Tirkey said.
The CEO assured them that the issues were being taken seriously and complaints would not arise, Tirkey added.
Congress workers in Bokaro, Hazaribag, Latehar and Chatra districts also staged protests against the CEC and the Centre over the alleged “theft of votes” through the SIR exercise in various states and demanded the CEC’s resignation.
Palamu District Congress Committee president Vimala Kumari said, “We demand the dismissal of Kumar. In support of our demand, we submitted a memorandum addressed to President Droupadi Murmu via Deputy Commissioner Dilip Pratap Singh Sekhawat.”
Before submitting the memorandum, the workers took out a demonstration from the Congress Bhawan to the District Collectorate and handed over a letter seeking Kumar’s dismissal, Kumari said.
The protests came after an Indian Express report claimed that Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had objected on record at least 14 times over the last 10 months to decisions and orders they said were issued without their knowledge, even as the nationwide rollout of the SIR was under the supervision of the full commission. PTI RPS COR ACD RPS MNB
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