New Delhi, Nov 26 (PTI) Congress leader Rahul Gandhi alleged on Wednesday that in the name of SIR, the BJP is creating a voter list to its liking by removing backwards, Dalits, the deprived and the poor from it, and claimed that the Election Commission (EC) is responsible for this “murder of democracy”.
Gandhi’s remarks came over a social media post of the Congress, in which the party shared a video purportedly of the brother-in-law of a booth level officer (BLO) who died on Tuesday after allegedly consuming a poisonous substance.
The man in the video claimed that the deceased was put under pressure and efforts were being made to remove the names of Other Backward Classes (OBC) voters from the electoral roll.
“Delete the names of OBC voters, or you will lose your job’,” the leader of opposition in the Lok Sabha said in a post in Hindi on X, quoting the man in the video.
“Pressure, threats… and the result? Finally, suicide,” he added.
In the name of SIR, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is creating a voter list to its liking by removing backward, Dalit, deprived and poor voters from it, Gandhi alleged.
The EC is responsible for this “murder of democracy”, he claimed.
In its post, the Congress said, “Delete the names of OBC voters or your job will be lost.’ This was said to Vipin Yadav, a BLO in Gonda, Uttar Pradesh, after which he committed suicide.” Yadav’s family has claimed that the sub-divisional magistrate (SDM) and lekhpal were pressuring him to delete the names of OBC voters during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls, the Congress said.
When Yadav refused to do so, he was threatened with dismissal and arrest, the party said in its post in Hindi.
This is the reality of SIR, which is forcing BLOs to commit suicide, it claimed.
“In fact, orders have been given secretly to delete the names of backward, Dalit, marginalised and opposition-supporting voters and create a voter list tailored to the BJP,” the Congress claimed further.
“(Chief Election Commissioner) Gyanesh Kumar and (Prime Minister) Narendra Modi are bent on destroying democracy, and SIR is their tool,” it alleged.
Yadav, a teacher deployed as a BLO in Gonda, died on Tuesday after allegedly consuming a poisonous substance, officials said.
Additional District Magistrate (Finance and Revenue) Alok Kumar said Yadav, from Malani Sarai Khas in Jaunpur district of Uttar Pradesh, was posted as an assistant teacher at the Jaitpur Majha Primary School in Nawabganj block.
He was also serving as a BLO in Khempur gram panchayat, the official added.
He allegedly consumed a poisonous substance on Tuesday morning. As his condition deteriorated, fellow teachers took him to a private hospital, from where he was referred to a medical college, Kumar said.
District Magistrate Priyanka Niranjan visited the medical college and later, arranged to shift the BLO to the Trauma Centre in Lucknow. However, doctors there declared him dead on arrival.
The ADM said a two-member investigation team comprising the chief revenue officer and the additional superintendent of police (west) has been set up to probe the incident.
The second phase of the SIR exercise began on November 4 with the enumeration stage and will continue till December 4.
The 12 states and Union territories where the exercise is being carried out are Chhattisgarh, Goa, Gujarat, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Puducherry, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, and Lakshadweep.
Among these, Tamil Nadu, Puducherry, Kerala and West Bengal are scheduled to go to polls in 2026.
In Assam, where Assembly elections are also due next year, the EC has announced a special revision of the electoral rolls.
(Disclaimer: This report has been published as part of the auto-generated syndicate wire feed. Apart from the headline, no editing has been done in the copy by ABP Live.)
