New Delhi : As the Election Commission of India (ECI) gears up to hold the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in Odisha, the Opposition leaders said that the process should be carried out in a non-political and unbiased way and not with a political motive. The Opposition also claimed that the SIR was being carried out in BJP-ruled Odisha to justify the ‘vote chori’ being committed through this process in Bihar.
On Monday, Odisha’s Chief Electoral Officer R.S. Gopalan announced that the state will start the SIR of the electoral rolls from September 2025 for the first time since 2002.
This comes as the Opposition INDIA Bloc continues its protest in and outside the Parliament over the SIR process in Bihar, questioning the timing of the revision just before the Assembly elections in the state.
Leader of Opposition (LoP) in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, and RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav are also carrying out the ‘Voter Adhikar Yatra’ in Bihar to expose the alleged irregularities in the voter list.
Meanwhile, the final voter list of Odisha’s voters will be published on January 7 next year.
Reacting to this, Congress leader Udit Raj said that the Opposition is not against the SIR process but the vote theft being committed in Bihar through the SIR.
Speaking to IANS, Udit Raj said, “There are no elections there right now. If they do it there, it’s fine. But here, we are saying the timing was not right. How is it possible to verify 8 crore voters in just one month? We are not against SIR; it can be conducted, but can the government manage it when it has not even been able to conduct the Census? It is a useless government.”
He also claimed that the SIR in Odisha is being done to justify the vote theft in Bihar and other states.
“There are no elections in Odisha. There is a BJP government in the state. I don’t know why they are conducting the SIR there. I think it is to justify whatever wrongdoings they (the ECI and government) are doing in Bihar and other states. They are trying to justify the ‘vote chori'”, the Congress leader added.
Shiv Sena (UBT) MP Priyanka Chaturvedi also stressed the importance of a fair SIR process.
“The SIR that has started in Bihar, the way people’s names are being removed, the way the entire constitutional mandate is being undermined and how the Election Commissioner is speaking, it is becoming very clear that the SIR is not truly meant to provide clean records or clean voter rolls but to run an agenda,” Chaturvedi told IANS.
“No matter where it starts, be it in Odisha, we hope that it is carried out through a non-political, unbiased and democratic process and not to disenfranchise the people who have no one to support them,” she added.
