Senior Congress leaderShashi Tharoorhas suggested that theSpecial Intensive Revision(SIR) of electoral rolls may have ended up benefiting the Congress-led alliance in Kerala by removing alleged duplicate voter registrations that had existed for years. Speaking at the Stanford India Conference in San Francisco, Tharoor said Kerala saw relatively fewer disputes over voter deletions compared to states such as West Bengal.
According to the Congress MP, the revision exercise may have cleaned up multiple voter registrations that allegedly favoured the CPI(M) in the past.
“In Kerala, I suspect the Congress benefited from the deletions because the CPI(M) was long a past master of double, triple, quadruple enrolment… That used to happen. So they were eliminated by the SIR,” Tharoor said, according to ANI.
The Thiruvananthapuram MP also appeared to suggest that concerns over voter deletions played out differently across states, with Kerala witnessing fewer controversies linked to the exercise than some other regions.
“Look at the Bengal case. 91 lakh names were struck off the rolls. Of those, 34 lakh living human beings have appealed, saying that they are around and they are legitimately entitled to vote. The rules have required each case to be adjudicated individually, so only a few hundred were adjudicated before the vote. To this day, there are some 31, 32 lakh people who might be found to have been legitimate voters in the remaining years while adjudication carries on, but they have missed their chance to vote," he said.
He also drew a comparison between the number of pending appeals and the BJP’s victory margin in Bengal, and questioned whether the process had been entirely fair.
“And the BJP won Bengal by a margin of 30 lakh votes. Now you tell me, is that entirely fair and democratic? This is the question that I ask. Honestly, I have no problem with deleting spurious, deleted, absent, migrated voters," Tharoor said.
As discussions continue behind the scenes, Congress leaders in Kerala remain in suspense over the final decision regarding the Chief Minister choice. Congress alliance partners are also said to be unhappy over the prolonged delay in deciding the CM, despite the alliance securing a massive mandate by winning 102 out of the 140 seats in the state.
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