A five-member RJD team Thursday met the Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar and two election commissioners to express concerns regarding the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in Bihar.
The representatives asked why the Election Commission did not issue notices to those whose names were deleted during the draft roll stage of SIR and why counting of postal ballots wasn’t completed before EVM counting got underway.
The RJD delegation included Lok Sabha MPs Abhay Kushwaha (Aurangabad) and Sudhakar Singh (Buxar) and Rajya Sabha MP Manoj Kumar Jha and party leaders Chitranjan Gagan and Mukund Singh.
Buxa MP Sudhakar Singh told The Indian Express, “We first asked the main question of urgency of conducting SIR just a few months before the Assembly polls in Bihar. We asked if ECI had been well prepared to conduct SIR properly in such a limited time. We did not get any convincing answer.”
Singh added they cited EC’s provisions that said notices had to be served to any elector whose name was being deleted from the electoral roll. “We asked if over 40 lakh people (minus those dead) – whose names were deleted till the draft roll stage – were served notices and asked to explain their side of the story. Again, we did not get a convincing reply,” he said.
On the postal ballots issue, the Buxar MP said, “We have often observed in past elections that counting of postal ballots begin first but run concurrently to EVMs. Very often, postal ballot counting comes under the scanner in case of very close margin seats. We asked why postal ballot counting is not concluded before EVM counting gets underway.” The meeting was a part of the series of interactions EC has been holding with parties since Kumar took charge in February.
