E-Paper
Bihar SIR in focus as Rahul Gandhi hosts INDIA bloc leaders
The INDIA bloc parties decided to march to the EC on August 11 to protest against the controversial special intensive revision of voter rolls in Bihar.
Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi on Thursday hosted a dinner for leaders of 25 INDIA bloc parties at his official residence in Delhi, where he showed them a presentation alleging fraud in the Lok Sabha voter roll in a constituency in Karnataka and said that after Maharashtra, Karnataka and Haryana, the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Election Commission will “definitely” try to steal votes in the upcoming polls in Bihar, West Bengal and Assam.
The INDIA bloc parties decided to march to EC on August 11 to protest against the controversial special intensive revision of voter rolls in Bihar, and discrepancies in voter lists, leaders present in the meeting said, in what is likely to become a major show of strength for the group.
Gandhi hosted the leaders at his new Sunehri Bagh Road bungalow and according to three leaders who attended the dinner, the focus of the gathering was entirely on the alleged discrepancies in the voter list and SIR in Bihar.
Gandhi, on social media, said, “I laid out BJP-EC’s #VoteChori blueprint before INDIA alliance leaders tonight. INDIA is united, determined, and ready to defend democracy.”
This was the first dinner meeting hosted by Gandhi. Congress leaders pointed out that all top-ranking leaders of the INDIA bloc attended the dinner, turning it into one of the major meetings of the two-year-old group. In 2021, Rahul Gandhi had hosted a breakfast meeting at the Constitution Club, but many top leaders skipped the event and sent second-rung leaders. This time, the raging issue of SIR as well as Gandhi’s elevated status as the LoP drew senior leaders such as Akhilesh Yadav of the Samajwadi Party, Abhishek Banerjee and Derek O’Brien of the Trinamool Congress, MA Baby of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), K Kanimozhi and TR Baalu of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, and former J&K chief ministers Farooq Abdullah and Mehbooba Mufti.
According to a leader, Gandhi gave a presentation on Karnataka’s Mahadevapura assembly seat, repeating allegations made earlier in the day that a large number of duplicate and fraud voters had entered the rolls in the constituency and that cost the Congress the seat. While there was no structured discussion on the issues, former deputy chief minister of Bihar Tejaswi Yadav appraised the INDIA leaders about the SIR in Bihar and alleged that “EC and the BJP are hand in glove.”
“They are trying to capture votes,” Yadav said at the dinner, according to leaders cited above.
Gandhi pitched the protests against EC as a battle for strengthening democracy. He told leaders, “We should not rest but fight, otherwise free and fair elections will not happen in India,” according to the leaders.
Yadav also announced a major rally in Bihar against SIR and urged all INDIA parties to join the final stage of the programme.
National Conference veteran Farooq Abdullah urged the leaders to take up the issue of restoration of J&K’s statehood both inside and outside Parliament, they said.
According to two leaders, there was no discussion on the upcoming vice presidential election.
