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Even as the deadline for filing up SIR enumeration forms has been extended by 15 days, till December 26, the upcoming Uttar Pradesh Assembly winter session — to start on November 19 — is likely to witness uproar as both Samajwadi Party and Congress are preparing to target the exercise, citing issues such as the death of BLOs, large-scale deletions, the “last minute extension” expressing fear of “mischief” and questioning the alleged “review” of the exercise by CM Yogi Adityanath at the divisional level.
Both the parties are preparing to make SIR the central issue during the upcoming session, demanding a debate on the same. They have also asked their leaders to compile the list of BLOs, who have died due to alleged “undue pressure” to meet the SIR deadlines.
“Samajwadi Party has been there on the ground and this will be the main issue on which the government will have to reply along with other issues such as price rise, unemployment, etc,” Chaudhary added.
Meanwhile, Congress state President Ajay Rai who had visited the houses of all the BLOs, who had allegedly died by suicide citing “undue pressure to complete the SIR exercise”, is compiling the list of all such incidents across the state and plans to present it during the session.
The Congress has also raised questions over the SIR review being conducted by the chief minister at the divisional level.
Congress Legislature Party leader Aradhana Mishra said: “The SIR exercise would be our focus point to raise during the upcoming Assembly session as it has affected the common masses and also those involved in it”.
Mishra said, “We will be raising a three-fold issue… firstly SIR is not constitutional. There have been surveys in the past but the BLOs on behalf of Election Commission used to add new voters and delete names of those no longer applicable but in the current exercise, the entire focus seems to be on deletion. It is this reason that there have been about three crore deletions, all of them are not Rohangiyas but a similar attempt has not been made to include new voters, who have been asked to bear their own responsibility to enroll themselves”.
The second point, she said, is that while preparation of the voter list was the task of the Election Commission and citizenship was the task of the Home Ministry, but “it seems that both the responsibilities have been overlapped”.
“Further, after all the hype over Aadhaar Card and linking it to almost everything, now it is no longer the final proof, which has left the voters, especially the ones in rural areas, troubled,” Mishra added.
Like Samajwadi Party, Congress leaders maintained that they will also raise their concern over the last minute extension of two weeks in the name of re-verification.
“There have been a large number of deletions and now this special two-week extension for Uttar Pradesh in the name of re-verification, We will raise this issue and our concern in the state assembly,” she said.
Meanwhile, Ajay Rai, also raised the issue of “the CM conducting the review of the SIR at the divisional level, when the exercise is that of Election Commission”.The BJP leaders, however, clarified that the CM is conducting the exercise with his party workers like any other political leader engaged in the SIR monitoring and not with the officers.
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