Patna: Supreme Court’s refusal on Thursday to halt the Election Commission (EC)’s special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Bihar triggered an exchange of barbs between RJD and BJP.
Bihar deputy chief minister Vijay Kumar Sinha said, "We will welcome every decision of the judiciary", attacking the opposition for adopting double standards on the issue.
“They (the opposition) say that they trust the Election Commission, but at the same time they insult the constitutional institution. If there is 100 percent voting, awareness is created among voters, and everyone gets the right to vote, why do they (the opposition) have objections to this?," he asked.
RJD spokesperson Chittaranjan Gagan alleged that the comments made by the Supreme Court while hearing the petition filed on Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exposed the Election Commission.
He asserted that the Supreme Court told the EC to consider Aadhaar, voter ID and ration cards as proof for Bihar poll revision, which the opposition had been continuously demanding. This will come as a big shock to those who are planning to remove the names of the poor, Dalits, backward, extremely backward and minorities from the voter list, he claimed.
Jan Suraaj Party founder Prashant Kishor said that people above the age of 18 had the right to vote and they should not be stopped from exercising their voting rights. “We are hopeful of getting justice from the court,” he remarked.
A banker from Digha locality in the state capital said that the Election Commission should include Aadhaar card, ration card and voter ID card in the list of valid documents for the SIR exercise. He said that it would make the SIR exercise much easier, as presently everybody was facing problems due to the exclusion of these cards from the list of valid documents.
A student, Anurag Kumar, said that all these cards should be considered as valid documents in the SIR exercise. He said that the SIR of the electoral rolls should have been held either after the last Lok Sabha election or should have been held after the assembly election.
