Bhubaneswar: BJD and Congress in Odisha Wednesday demanded absolute transparency in the special intensive revision of electoral rolls, an exercise which will start next month in the state after a gap of over 20 years.
Both parties also announced that they would launch protests if a “Bihar-like exercise” is conducted in Odisha.
More than 65 lakh enumeration forms were “not included” in the draft electoral rolls prepared as part of the first phase of special intensive revision (SIR) by the Election Commission in Bihar, bringing down the total number of around 7.9 crore registered voters to 7.24 crore.
Odisha’s Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) RS Gopalan has said that all political parties in the state have been informed about the SIR, and preparations are underway to start the exercise in September.
As part of the revision, the number of polling booths across the state will increase from 38,000 to 45,000, ensuring better accessibility and voter convenience, he said.
“The last intensive revision of the electoral rolls in Odisha was conducted in 2002,” Gopalan told PTI.
Both the BJD and the Congress have raised doubts over the transparency of the exercise.
“We have no objection to SIR if it is conducted fairly. But a Bihar-like exercise would force all to think differently. There should be clarity over the SIR exercise,” BJD spokesperson Lenin Mohanty said.
He also said conducting the special intensive revision of the electoral rolls is the job of the Election Commission of India, but a political party is the “most excited”.
“When the right time comes, our leader Naveen Patnaik will take a call on the matter. The basic fact is that all genuine voters must get the opportunity to exercise his or her democratic right,” Mohanty said.
BJD MLA and former minister P K Deb claimed that the party will not be silent if “there is an effort to delete voters from the list in the garb of the SIR, as it has allegedly been done in Bihar”.
He also asked why the SIR was delayed by so many years, though there is a provision to undertake the exercise every 10 years.
Odisha Pradesh Congress Committee (OPCC) president Bhakta Charan Das said the party suspected that the BJP was “planning to carry out ‘vote theft’ in Odisha by using the SIR exercise”.
“The government’s intention has been exposed after the Supreme Court directed the Election Commission to provide details of voters excluded during the SIR in Bihar and forced it to publish the list,” the Congress leader said.
The Election Commission (EC) Monday came out with the names of 65 lakh people who were removed from the draft electoral rolls published as part of the SIR in Bihar.
“The Congress wants eligible voters to be included on the lists and ineligible ones to be excluded. But the working style and steps of the Election Commission, which has become a spokesperson of the BJP, are not satisfactory,” Das alleged.
He warned that there would be a statewide movement if voter lists in Odisha were “tampered”.
PTI
