Nadda: SIR to purify rolls; govt using it to divide, distract and deflect, says Derek

Nadda said it was well within EC’s purview to periodically “purify electoral rolls” to ensure no eligible voter is excluded and no ineligible voter is included in it.

Nadda attacked Congress for “creating a narrative” that mass-scale vote rigging was taking place in the name of SIR. He said no questions were raised on the EC’s credibility when its functioning “was controlled by a single party run by one family”.

Stressing that SIR is not a new exercise, Nadda said it has been part of India’s democratic process since 1952. “It was conducted in 1952, 1957 and 1961, when Jawaharlal Nehru was the PM. In 1965, Lal Bahadur Shastri was the PM. In 1983, Indira Gandhi was PM. In 1987 and 1989, Rajiv Gandhi was PM. In 1992, PV Narasimha Rao was PM,” he said.

“Except for Atalji (Atal Bihari Vajpayee), every time SIR was carried out, the PM was from Congress,” Nadda said. In 2002, Vajpayee was PM and in 2004 Manmohan Singh was the PM, he said.

Rejecting the Opposition’s allegation of the government denying a debate on SIR, he said the Narendra Modi government never shies away from discussion on any issue in Parliament. He said they couldn’t have a debate on the SIR exercise as the EC is not present in Parliament to respond. “However, when the Opposition wanted a debate on electoral reforms, we agreed,” he said.

Participating in the debate, TMC MP Derek O’Brien cited Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s speech in LS last week, when he said it was the NDA government’s policy to “detect illegal immigrants, delete them from the electoral rolls and deport them to their home countries”, and said: “The actual Ds are not detect, delete, deport. [They are] divide, distract, deflect. Divide — polarise the electorate on the basis of religion and language. You speak Bengali in some other states, you are targeted as being Bangladeshi… Distract — to distract from your own failures you come up with a whole lot of other distractions. And, deflect. The big thing is infiltrators. Who is in charge of the borders, which Chief Minister? No sir, Class 8 civics tells you it’s the Home Minister of this country.”

On electoral reforms, O’Brien went on to suggest government funding of elections, which he said TMC had included in its manifestos since 2009.

BSP MP Ramji said though his party did not oppose the SIR, the time allowed for it was less and could lead to many poor and migrant electors getting left out.  “It will be a denial of the right to vote given to such people by Babasaheb Bhim Rao Ambedkar.”