SIR being used to ‘manipulate’ polls, claims INDIA bloc, will write to CJI

NEW DELHI: Amid a consensus in the opposition alliance that Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls was being used to “influence electoral outcomes”, the INDIA bloc on Monday decided to write to the Chief Justice of India to raise its concerns about the fairness of the elections taking place in the country.Finalising a common agenda of political action at its first meeting since the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, the opposition alliance demanded that education minister Dharmendra Pradhan resign for “betrayal of lakhs of students who have appeared in NEET and CBSE examinations”. Crucially, the bloc demanded that PM Narendra Modi call an all-party meeting to discuss “worsening economic crisis, intensifying price rise, growing unemployment, atrocities, and farmers’ issues”.Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge addressed a joint press conference after the meeting of the bloc.The decision to raise SIR and associated issues at the topmost level of grievance redressal, the CJI, came after all the political parties in the meeting expressed concern that SIR was leading to “mass disenfranchisement” and tampering with electoral rolls, which has raised serious question marks on the fairness of elections.It was alleged that SIR, which started with the Bihar assembly polls, influenced the election’s outcome, as it has done in West Bengal. With former Bengal CM and TMC chief Mamata Banerjee present, Samajwadi Party’s Akhilesh Yadav and RJD’s Tejashwi Yadav said the Bengal election was not lost but “stolen”, while Congress’s Rahul Gandhi said elections were being manipulated in favour of the BJP.Flagging of the NEET-CBSE row as the most important issue suggests that the opposition will further up the ante on the matter in the coming days, currently limited to protests by Congress’s youth organisations, coupled with Rahul’s vocal interventions.Interestingly, National Conference’s Omar Abdullah, CPI(ML)’s Dipankar Bhattacharya, Shiv Sena (UBT)’s Uddhav Thackeray and NCP (SP)’s Supriya Sule mentioned the emergence of “Cockroach Janta Party (CJP)” overnight with an apparently massive following online as an important development and advocated it should be supported.They argued the issue raised by the satirical outfit has found resonance and the opposition should look to capture that space with youngsters, even as they wondered why the opposition has not been able to tap into that widespread resentment.