Ashok Gehlot, Govind Singh Dotasra detained during Congress protest in Jaipur over SIR row

Heavy police deployment was made at Shaheed Smarak and traffic on MI Road was diverted.

Soon after the march began, the protesters were met with multiple layers of barricades. When the protesters tried to push through the barricades, police used water cannons to disperse them.

A scuffle broke out between workers and police, following which water cannons were used. Several senior leaders, including Gehlot and Dotasra, were detained and taken to Vidyadhar Nagar police station. They were later released.

At the police station, the Congress leaders raised slogans against CEC Kumar and Chief Minister Bhajan Lal Sharma.

Earlier, addressing the gathering, Dotasra alleged that the Election Commission (EC) was undermining voters’ rights and accused the BJP of using electoral institutions to influence elections. He said the Congress was fighting a nationwide movement to protect the right to vote guaranteed by the Constitution.

Dotasra also targeted CEC Gyanesh Kumar, alleging that decisions concerning electoral rolls and the SIR process were being taken in a manner that deprived genuine voters of their rights. The Congress has previously demanded Kumar’s removal and arrest, while the EC has continued to oversee the electoral-roll revision process.

Jully raised questions over changes relating to Form 6, which is used for registration of new voters. He alleged that the process had been altered to make the 2002 electoral rolls a basis for establishing voters’ eligibility, and claimed that the move had resulted in the exclusion of large numbers of people.

Jully further alleged that the Election Commission had centralised the electoral-roll system through ERO-Net and that names were being added or deleted without adequate scrutiny at the local level. Congress leaders have also repeatedly raised concerns over the deletion of names during the SIR exercise. The EC’s voter services portal currently provides facilities for voters to check their names in the last SIR roll and submit documents against notices issued during the process.

“Congress workers will have to remain alert. This is a do-or-die battle. Workers should go among the people, understand the situation in the country and see how they can contribute to saving democracy,” Gehlot said.

Referring to the recently held urban local body elections in the state, the former CM claimed that the Congress lost because of “arbitrary and wrong” delimitation of wards.

“The government resorted to hooliganism in the urban local body elections and misused police and administration. We lost the elections because of delimitation,” he alleged.

Monday’s protest was part of the Rajasthan Congress’s wider campaign against the Election Commission. Dotasra had announced the Jaipur demonstration last week and said similar protests would subsequently be organised in districts across the state.

The Indian Express had reported on September 25 that Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi wrote separately to Cabinet Secretary TV Somanathan after issuance of a work allocation order within the EC that “threatened to concentrate the powers” at the poll body centrally to add or delete names and update records in the voters’ list rather than allowing officials at the state level.

With PTI inputs