The Congress Working Committee on Wednesday reiterated that the “conspiracy” of the special intensive revision of the electoral rolls conducted by the Election Commission in Bihar is the “greatest threat” to the country’s democracy.
In an appeal to voters in Bihar, the Opposition party alleged that the exercise had been designed to “systematically rob” the right to vote from marginalised communities, adding that this disenfranchisement would lead to “snatching away their rights” to welfare schemes and reservations.
The committee, in another resolution, claimed that the voter roll revision was yet another “dirty trick” from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s “toolkit” to “manipulate electoral rolls and cling on to power”.
The two resolutions were passed during the Congress Working Committee meeting in Patna chaired by party chief Mallikarjun Kharge and attended by several leaders including Rahul Gandhi, Sachin Pilot, KC Venugopal, Jairam Ramesh and Ajay Maken.
This was the first meeting of the Congress Working Committee, a key decision-making body of the party, in Bihar since 1940.
The meeting came ahead of the Assembly elections in Bihar, which is expected to be held in October or November. The party passed a series of resolutions in light of the upcoming polls.
In one of the resolutions, the Congress Working Committee said that the “revelation of large-scale vote chori [theft] and irregularities in our electoral rolls have shaken public belief in the very foundations of our democracy”.
This was a reference to repeated allegations raised by Gandhi of vote theft in Karnataka and Maharashtra. The Election Commission has rejected the claims.
The party added that alleged electoral fraud exposed the “systematic and deliberate conspiracy used to manufacture an elected majority” for the BJP. “A government built on stolen mandates and rigged voter lists has no moral or political legitimacy,” it said.
“It is not based on public trust but on deceit,” the resolution said. “In the absence of democratic accountability, the government is freed of any obligation to care about unemployment, farmer suicides, inflation, crumbling healthcare, ruined education and crumbling infrastructure.”
The resolution claimed that the government is apathetic because it knows that it can remain in power “not through service but through deceit and fear”.
It added: “Vote chori is inseparable from attacks on the Constitution, the economy, social justice and national security. It is the single thread that exposes the regime’s illegitimacy and its actions.”
In its appeal to Bihar voters, the Congress Working Committee urged them to recognise the power of their vote.
The Congress promises to “continue the struggle, both inside Parliament and on the streets”, it said.
“This fight is for the protection of our fundamental constitutional rights, for reservations and social justice, and for ensuring fair delivery of welfare benefits to every citizen of Bihar as well as India,” the party said.
On India’s economy, the resolution stated that the Union government had wreaked “economic devastation, even as it attempts to manipulate data to create the image of a booming economy”.
It also noted that the government had refused to address “with honesty” repeated claims made by US President Donald Trump that he had mediated the ceasefire between India and Pakistan in May.
New Delhi has rejected Trump’s assertions.
In its resolution, the Congress Working Committee also expressed “profound distress over the ongoing genocide of innocent civilians” in Gaza and criticised the alleged silence of the Union government.
“India has always been a beacon of moral conscience and the champion of the post-colonial world – it it has now shamefully been reduced to a silent spectator,” the party said. “Our foreign policy has now acquired a moral taint.”
Israel’s military offensive in Gaza began in October 2023 after Hamas killed 1,200 persons during its incursion into southern Israel and took hostages. Israel has been carrying out unprecedented air and ground strikes on besieged Gaza since then, leaving more than 62,600 persons dead.
In August, the United Nation formally declared a famine in northern Gaza, warning that it could spread from the Gaza Governorate to Deir Al Balah and Khan Younis in the coming weeks.
A UN commission of inquiry said on September 16 that Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.
India’s longstanding position has been to support a two-state solution.
In July, New Delhi called for a ceasefire in Gaza, saying that “intermittent pauses in hostilities” were inadequate to address the scale of challenges faced by its residents.
However, this came more than a month after India, along with 19 other countries, abstained from voting on a resolution that the UN General Assembly adopted demanding a ceasefire in Gaza.
Internal discord within NDA, says Mallikarjun Kharge
During the Congress Working Committee meeting, Kharge claimed that the “internal discord” within the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance was now out in the open, The Indian Express reported.
Kharge added that Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, who has become “a liability”, has been “mentally retired by the BJP”.
The Congress chief said that the state government led by Kumar had “been on hiatus for a long time”.
“The people of Bihar do not want the BJP’s religious polarisation,” the newspaper quoted him as saying. “They want development-focused politics. They demand fundamental and long-term solutions from their government. They want the right to development, employment, social justice, and good governance, and this is what the Congress party demands”.
Voter roll revision
The revision of the electoral rolls in Bihar was announced by the Election Commission on June 24. As part of the exercise, persons whose names were not on the 2003 voter list needed to submit proof of eligibility to vote.
The deadline for submitting claims and objections to the draft rolls was September 1, while the final list will be published on September 30.
Concerns have been raised that the process could disenfranchise many voters. The draft electoral roll published on August 1 showed that 65.6 lakh names were removed from the list.
The Election Commission has defended the voter roll revision as a clean-up exercise to remove names of the deceased, duplicate entries and undocumented migrants ahead of the elections in the state.
Earlier this month, the Supreme Court directed the Election Commission to accept Aadhaar cards as a valid identity proof for the ongoing special intensive revision.
The Aadhaar card was not among the 11 documents that the poll panel had said could be submitted as proof of citizenship. Several petitioners had objected to the exclusion of Aadhaar, the most widely held ID, from the list of permissible documents, calling it “absurd”.
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