Chandigarh: Stating that the Election Commission of India (ECI) is rolling out yet another phase of the special intensive revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls in the election-bound states and Punjab will be next in line, Punjab Congress president Amarinder Singh Raja Warring on Monday alleged that ``the EC is clearly doing the homework for the BJP’’.
Reacting to the ECI’s proposal to carry out SIR in states like Tamil Nadu, Kerala and West Bengal which are scheduled to go for elections next year, Warring held that Punjab will be next in the line as the state is scheduled to go for polls in early 2027.
The PCC president alleged that this is an “organised way of stealing votes by the ECI for the BJP”. He went on to add that ```through the SIR, the ECI not only collects the voters’ data which it keeps at the disposal of the BJP, but in the process also disenfranchises all those voters, like the Dalits, the Backward Classes (BCs) and the minorities, whom the BJP suspects of not voting for it.
He alleged that the BJP will repeat the same tactic in Punjab also using the “good offices of the Election Commission of India”. Otherwise, he claimed, the BJP does not have any significant base in Punjab worth a single assembly segment.
He held that the Congress will not let the ECI do the BJP’s bidding in Punjab and, at the same time, he cautioned people to be careful against removal of their names from the electoral rolls, which is the main purpose of the SIR. He said, the Congress workers at grassroots level will be assigned duties to guard against the possible vote theft by way of disenfranchising voters through SIR.
