Parties allege SIR aims to delete minority and opposition votes
Chennai: Accusing the Union BJP Government of bringing in the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in the State, unmindful of the vehement opposition from political parties, including the DMK, leaders of various parties in the Secular Progressive Alliance announced a protest in all district headquarters on November 11 at 10 am.
The joint statement of the leaders on Thursday said SIR, aimed at eliminating the votes of minorities and those opposed to the BJP, was a conspiracy to remove eligible voters and include ineligible voters in the electoral rolls with a view to burying democracy to protect the BJP government.
Pointing out that the opposition parties had been resisting the revision since the beginning, they said that the hurry in which the Election Commission of India (ECI) had introduced SIR in 12 States, including Tamil Nadu, without even rectifying the anomalies in the Bihar electoral rolls, pointed to an ECI scheme to disenfranchise genuine voters by taking their names off the electoral roll.
Among the specific issues that they pointed out were that the BLOs had not started distributing the forms of SIR till Thursday in most places, though the process started on Tuesday itself and that no communication had been established between BLOs and BLA2. Another complaint was that the BLOs were insisting on voters submitting the filled-up forms for enumeration in a day’s time in some places, they said.
Complaining about the time chosen for the revision, the leaders said that people in rural areas and farmers, who form the majority, would not be able to complete the process of filling up the forms for remuneration in view to the weather conditions brought about by the North East monsoon.
So there was a possibility of deleting large numbers of voters from the list in view of their inability to submit the filled-up forms in the rainy season, that would also require the services of revenue officials to handle monsoon-related problems. The time of the year was most unsuited for an enumeration process, they said,
Pointing out that the voters list for 2002/2005 uploaded in the ECI website was incomplete with a potential to create confusion, the leaders said that the process was started by the ECI, which had become the handmaiden of the ruling BJP, despite pleas to give it up.
Among the leaders who had signed the statement were DMK treasurer T R Baalu, DK president K Veeramani, VCK president Thol Thirumavalavan, MDMK general secretary Vaiko and TNCC president K Selvaperunthagai.
