Submit affidavit in 7 days to back 'vote chori' claims: CEC Gyanesh Kumar to Rahul Gandhi
New Delhi, Aug 17 (PTI): Hitting back at Rahul Gandhi for his 'vote theft' charges against the Election Commission, Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar on Sunday served a seven-day ultimatum on the Congress leader to submit a signed affidavit to back his claims, else his allegations will be considered baseless and invalid.
In his first press conference after Gandhi levelled allegations of 'vote chori' in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections and several opposition leaders flagged issues about revision of electoral rolls in Bihar, a combative Kumar asked Gandhi to either apologise or back his claims with a signed affidavit as required under electoral rules.
"Give an affidavit or apologise to the nation. There is no third option. If an affidavit is not given within seven days, this means that all allegations are baseless," said Kumar, flanked by Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi.
The remarks by the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) came on a day when Gandhi-led opposition launched the ‘Vote Adhikar Yatra’ in Bihar and stepped up attack against the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in the poll-bound state.
Kumar said the SIR exercise was aimed at removing all shortcomings in the voter list and it is a matter of grave concern that some parties are spreading misinformation about it, "firing from the Election Commission's shoulder".
"If one thinks that by making a PPT presentation with wrong facts, the ECI will act, that is not the case. EC cannot act without the affidavit in such a serious matter as it would be against the law and the Constitution," Kumar said.
Levelling allegations of "vote chori", Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi had on July 31, through a presentation at a press conference, cited data from the 2024 Lok Sabha polls to claim that over 1 lakh votes were "stolen" in Mahadevapura assembly segment in Karnataka through five types of manipulation, including duplicate voters, fake and invalid addresses and single-address voters.
The chief electoral officers of several states had asked Gandhi to file an affidavit under oath on his claims, but he had refused to do so.
The CEC on Sunday admitted that there could be discrepancies in the electoral rolls and asserted that SIR was the only way to correct this. He, however, contended that a person being present in multiple voter lists does not automatically mean that he or she also voted multiple times.
Kumar also said the poll panel has already identified and corrected more than three lakh cases of multiple people having the same voter identity card numbers, but the duplicate voter issue of one person being listed as a voter at multiple places can be resolved only through exercises like SIR.
"At the ground level, all the voters, district presidents of political parties, BLOs are working transparently, validating and giving video testimonials. It is a worrying matter that these efforts are not reaching their national and state level leaders, or they are ignoring it to create confusion. The truth is, all the stakeholders are walking in tandem to make the SIR successful; they are working hard," Kumar said.
The CEC also urged all political parties to point out the mistakes in the Bihar draft electoral rolls before September 1.
Kumar said the EC cannot discriminate among political parties, and both ruling and opposition parties are equal before the poll authority.
He said the list of names deleted from Bihar's draft electoral rolls following special intensive revision has been posted on the websites of district magistrates within 56 hours of the Supreme Court's orders.
The apex court, while hearing a bunch of petitions challenging SIR, had last week asked the Election Commission to publish details of 65 lakh deleted names from the voters list with reasons of non-inclusion to enhance transparency in the process.
Soon after Kumar's 85-minute press conference ended, Congress said the CEC answered none of the questions raised by Gandhi meaningfully and called his assertion of the Election Commission making no distinction between opposition and ruling party as "laughable". Several opposition leaders described the press conference as a "monologue" by the CEC.
With the opposition questioning the timing of the electoral roll revision in Bihar, Kumar said that it is a myth that SIR has been carried out in haste and emphasised that it is the EC's legal duty to correct the voter list before every election.
"Doors of the Election Commission are open to everyone, and booth-level officers and agents are working together in a transparent manner to carry out the SIR exercise," he said.
The CEC asserted that neither the EC nor the voters are scared of "baseless allegations" of double voting and "vote chori".
"The Election Commission will remain steadfast like a rock with voters of all classes without bothering about politics being played by some," Kumar said.
Kumar also recalled that the Supreme Court, in a 2019 judgement, had prohibited sharing machine-readable voter lists as such an act would violate the privacy of voters.
"We have to understand the difference between a machine-readable voter list and a searchable voter list. You can search the voter list available on the Election Commission website by entering the EPIC number. You can also download it. This is not called machine-readable.
“Regarding machine-readable, in 2019, the Supreme Court also studied this subject in depth and found that giving a machine-readable electoral roll can violate the privacy of the voter... The machine-readable voter list is prohibited. This decision of the Election Commission is after the judgment of the Supreme Court and is from 2019," Kumar said on the opposition demand.
The Congress and other opposition parties have been pressing the EC to provide machine-readable digital copy of Maharashtra voter lists, alleging irregularities in the 2024 state polls.
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Odisha: Normalcy returns to violence-hit Malkangiri; internet services fully restored
Malkangiri (PTI): Normalcy returned to Odisha’s Malkangiri district on Monday, nearly a week after around 200 villages were damaged in violent clashes in a village, with the district administration fully restoring internet services, a senior official said.
Additional District Magistrate Bedabar Pradhan said internet services, suspended across the district on December 8 to curb the spread of rumours and misinformation following the clashes, were restored after the situation improved.
The suspension had been extended in phases till 12 noon on Monday.
The administration also withdrew prohibitory orders imposed under Section 163 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita within a 10-km radius of MV-26 village, where arson incidents were reported on December 7 and December 8.
Though the violence was confined to two villages, tension had gripped the entire district, as the incident took the form of a clash between local tribals and Bengali settlers following the recovery of a headless body of a woman on December 4, officials said.
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The violence broke out after residents of Rakhelguda village allegedly set ablaze several houses belonging to Bengali residents, forcing hundreds to flee. The headless body of Lake Podiami (51), a woman from the Koya tribe, was recovered from the banks of the Poteru river on December 4, while her head was found six days later at a location about 15 km away.
Officials said the district administration held several rounds of discussions with representatives of the tribal and Bengali communities, following which both sides agreed to maintain peace.
Relief and rehabilitation work has since been launched at MV-26 village, with preliminary assessment pegging property damage at around Rs 3.8 crore.
A two-member ministerial team headed by Deputy Chief Minister K V Singh Deo visited the affected village, interacted with officials and locals, and submitted a report to the chief minister.
So far, 18 people have been arrested in connection with the violence, the officials said, adding that despite the withdrawal of prohibitory orders and restoration of internet services, security forces, including BSF and CRPF personnel, continue to be deployed to prevent any untoward incident.
On Sunday, Nabarangpur MP Balabhadra Majhi visited MV-26 and neighbouring Rakhelguda villages, and held discussions with members of both communities as part of efforts to rebuild confidence and restore peace.
More than two lakh Bengali-speaking Bangladeshis were rehabilitated by the Centre in Malkangiri and Nabarangpur districts in 1968, and they currently reside in 124 villages of Malkangiri.
