RK Singh, a former union minister, has accused the Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar of violating the law and illegally conducting the SIR exercise across the country.
Former Union Minister RK Singh has alleged that Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar and his superiors are violating the law by conducting the special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in an illegal manner. According to Singh, the order for SIR across the country is against section 21 of the Representation of the People Act, which states that the exercise can only be undertaken in specific cases and only in specific constituencies or parts of a constituency. He also stated that the Supreme Court's ruling upholding the general SIR was incorrect. Singh served as a minister in the Narendra Modi government between 2019 and 2024, having previously been the Union home secretary between 2011 and 2013 in the Manmohan Singh government. He resigned from the Bharatiya Janata Party in November after being suspended for alleged activities against the party. In his social media post, Singh also accused Kumar of adding a new appendix to Form 6 without authorization and against the views of the two election commissioners. Sandhu and Joshi, two of the election commissioners, have objected to the poll panel's decisions about SIR 14 times in ten months regarding registration of new voters, changes to Form 6, appeals against voter inclusion in West Bengal, and handling of voter data in Goa among other matters. In one written objection, Sandhu stated that the action was unauthorized and illegal. On Saturday, the poll panel claimed that the declaration attached to Form 6 for the SIR exercise had been upheld by the Supreme Court. Singh also alleged that objections to voter inclusion through Form 7 were filed in bulk, without specifying who filed them. He questioned whether the poll panel and 'some people from a political party' were acting together to approve 'bogus' objections and delete names. Singh accused Kumar of deleting the names of voters enlisted by Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) after 2003 without any basis or investigation, which he claimed was illegal. He also stated that this violation of a 1995 Supreme Court judgment that holds 'the enquiry authority or the objector and not the voter must bring forth material evidence to back any claim that an enrolled voter be disqualified.'
Source:
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