From CEC Gyanesh Kumar to Modi, Shah, Congress set to escalate its SIR battle

As it met on Tuesday (September 29) amid a renewed row over the Election Commission’s handling of the Special Intensive Revision of voter lists, the Congress Working Committee (CWC) reiterated the party’s call for Gyanesh Kumar’s immediate exit as the poll panel chief and even demanded resignations of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah.

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The resolution by the Congress party’s highest decision-making body asserting “vote chori has been organised by the CEC on behalf of” Modi and Shah has set the tone for Wednesday’s INDIA bloc conclave. The meeting of the Opposition coalition’s top leadership, the first since June 8, has been convened to chart a united INDIA bloc campaign against the Centre and the poll panel in the wake of recent revelations by The Indian Express.

SIR row raises political stakes

Reports by the national daily quoted at least 14 letters and notes written by Election Commissioners SS Sandhu and Vivek Joshi over a period of 10 months disagreeing with various changes introduced to the SIR process, in prima facie violation of existing rules, at the behest of Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar. That the commission still adopted the changes has triggered serious questions on the legal sanctity of the contentious SIR exercise that threatens to disenfranchise crores of voters.

While the Opposition has been protesting against the SIR ever since it first began with Bihar last year, the latest exposé has pushed both the Centre and the usually voluble CEC on the back foot while giving the INDIA bloc new ammunition to escalate its ongoing broadside.

Unlike in the past, when Kumar would personally respond to the Opposition’s tirade with haughty dares and denials, the CEC has not only evaded the press since the recent revelations were made but has also been forced to make several new changes to the SIR process to camouflage the imprint of his decisions that drew resistance from his own colleagues. Though the government has tried, as it did in the past, to brazen out the storm by stoutly defending the CEC, the silence of Modi and Shah on the row has been deafening.

With public perception about the Modi government already taking a hit in recent months due to controversies that have come in quick succession – Centre’s handling of youth protests against exam paper leaks, donation theft at Ayodhya’s Ram Mandir and MDR on UPI transactions, among others – the Opposition senses an opportunity to draw blood on the fresh EC imbroglio. The CWC’s decision to lasso Modi and Shah into the controversy that had, thus far, seen the party and the wider Opposition only demand Kumar’s removal as CEC is an indication that the INDIA bloc’s largest constituent will make a case before its allies on Wednesday to scale up their collective protest on the SIR issue by placing the blame at the Prime Minister’s doorstep.

Congress pushes for escalation

Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge’s opening remarks at the CWC meet too hinted in this direction. “History is witness that it was this very Prime Minister who destroyed India’s economy 10 years ago with the decision of notebandi (demonetisation) and 10 years later, with the conspiracy of votebandi (disenfranchisement), he is now destroying our democracy… The brunt of all his misdeeds falls most heavily on the poor. In notebandi, the poor stood in line and in votebandi, the poor have been thrown out of the line. The poor have only one strength, their vote and Modi wants to snatch this away, but we will not allow it,” Kharge told the over 60 Congress leaders present at the meet.

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The resolution adopted by the CWC at the end of its more than two hours of deliberations outlined four key demands: “immediate resignation of the CEC, who has forfeited all moral and institutional authority…immediate suspension of the SIR… immediate restoration of the 13.30 crore names removed from the electoral rolls” and the resignation of Modi and Shah to “ensure the safety of our Constitution and hard-earned democracy”.

Sources in the INDIA bloc said their respective parties are “aligned with the Congress’s demands” and that Wednesday’s meeting of the alliance’s senior leaders would “build on what the CWC resolution has already outlined and come up with a clear roadmap of a sustained joint nationwide agitation on these demands”.

INDIA bloc weighs next steps

While the CWC meeting had its typical scenes of sycophancy with multiple members, including Kharge and KC Venugopal, hailing Lok Sabha Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi for spearheading the party’s vote chori campaign long before the SIR had even begun, the INDIA bloc meeting is expected to be about the brass-tacks of how the coalition’s agitation must be executed.

Congress sources said Rahul, who has undoubtedly been the Opposition’s most consistent leader in flagging anomalies in the electoral system, is expected to lead his party’s push at Wednesday’s meeting to put Modi and Shah in the direct line of fire over the EC imbroglio.

Even at the last INDIA bloc meeting held on June 8 weeks after the Trinamool Congress’s rout in the Bengal polls, Rahul had spoken sharply against vote chori and told allies like Mamata Banerjee, Shiv Sena-UBT chief Uddhav Thackeray and Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav that while they may yet harbour some doubt about elections being stolen by the BJP through the EC, he was “100 per cent sure about it”.

Putting voters at the centre

A senior CWC member said the Lok Sabha LoP was “firmly of the view” that the manner in which the SIR is being conducted and the revelations that have now begun to come “not from him (Rahul) but from the media and from within the government” have begun to stir doubts in the mind of voters about the fairness of elections.

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This is also likely to be Rahul’s pitch at the INDIA bloc conclave. Congress sources say by formulating the Opposition’s arguments against the EC in a way that “puts the voter at the heart of our campaign”, the INDIA bloc can also sidestep questions on why it continues to legitimise elections through participation if it is convinced that the system is “rigged” towards a pre-determined result in favour of the BJP.

Congress leaders Jairam Ramesh and KC Venugopal, who briefed the media about the CWC deliberations, did just that when they skirted queries about the Opposition’s reluctance to boycott elections. Instead, they asserted the moral duty of the Opposition to fight for fairness of the poll process and to protect the voters’ right to adult franchise.