'No clarity yet': Tejashwi Yadav slams Election Commission over Bihar SIR drive; once again claims that names will be 'removed' from list
NEW DELHI:
Rashtriya Janata Dal
(RJD) leader
Tejashwi Yadav
on Monday alleged that his party-led opposition Mahagathbandhan (Grand Alliance) is yet to get clarity from the
Election Commission of India
(ECI) regarding the poll panel's contentious electoral roll revision exercise in poll-bound Bihar.
His remarks came on a day when the
Supreme Court
agreed to hear
petitions challenging ECI's Special Intensive Revision (SIR), with the hearing set to be held on Thursday.
"On July 5, we met ECI officials and posed our questions. The worry is that we have no clarity from them so far," Yadav said at a joint press conference of the Mahagathbandhan allies.
The Bihar EC, on the other hand, has no authority to provide an answer as it works "only as a post office," he added.
Further, the former deputy chief minister and current leader of opposition reiterated his charge that people would lose their voting rights if they do not have the 11 documents which EC has sought in the state.
"People of don't have the 11 documents which ECI has asked for; rather, they have an Aadhar card, MGNREGA card, and ration card. This is the only document which the poor people of Bihar have. It is clear that the people who do not have these 11 documents, their names will be removed," Yadav said.
by Taboola
by Taboola
Sponsored Links
Sponsored Links
Promoted Links
Promoted Links
You May Like
One of the Most Successful Investors of All Time, Warren Buffett, Recommends: 5 Books for Turning...
Blinkist: Warren Buffett's Reading List
Click Here
Undo
Since the announcement of SIR of electoral rolls, the opposition parties have raised their concerns.
The Supreme Court petitions against thedrive were filed by RJD MP Manoj Jha, the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), activist Yogendra Yadav, Trinamool MP Mahua Moitra, and former Bihar MLA Mujahid Alam.
The petitioners sought a direction to quash ECI's June 24 directive, which requires large sections of voters in Bihar to submit proof of citizenship to remain on the electoral rolls.
They also raised concerns over the exclusion of widely held documents like Aadhaar and ration cards, stating that this would "disproportionately affect" the poor and marginalised voters, especially in rural Bihar.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Hindu
18 minutes ago
- The Hindu
Immediately stop special intensive revision of electoral rolls in Bihar, say INDIA bloc leaders
Demanding a halt to the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in poll-bound Bihar, INDIA bloc leaders on Monday (July 7, 2025) criticised the Election Commission (EC), and said the poll body was in a confused situation. Addressing a press conference in Patna, Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), Congress, Vikassheel Insaan Party (VIP) and the Left parties said the EC should not create doubts in the minds of common people and end the complex processes to strengthen democracy. The INDIA bloc coordination committee headed by RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav asked the EC to stop the SIR immediately in Bihar and continue it after the polls. Mr. Yadav said Bihar Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Vinod Singh Gunjiyal had not yet responded to the doubts and questions raised by the INDIA bloc leaders on July 5, 2025. 'People are being confused by no answers to the questions and every day the Election Commission is issuing new guidelines. Instead of clarifying the contradictory situation, people are being misled,' Mr. Yadav said. 'No clarification issued' The RJD leader asserted, 'No clarification is being made on Aadhaar card, MGNREGS card, ration card as all these documents have been considered valid for the inclusion of new voters in Form-6 by the EC but in the notification issued on June 24, 2025, there is no recognition of these documents and 11 separate documents have been sought, which are not easy to provide for the poor and deprived sections.' Talking about the EC advertisement which was published in all local newspapers of Bihar on Sunday (July 6, 2025), Mr. Yadav said the EC released a full-page advertisement but two different things were said in it. 'The EC says some things in the advertisement but the guidelines say something else. In the advertisement, it was said the enumeration form has to be filled and submitted immediately to the Booth Level Officers [BLOs] and the documents should be given later but after an hour, the EC said the form has to be filled according to the order that has already been issued,' Mr. Yadav said. He said there was a lot of difference between the June 24 order and the advertisement released on July 6, 2025, due to which the confusion was prevailing among the voters. 'Two Facebook posts were issued by the office of the Election Commission. Then after an hour it is told that the documents have to be made available only by July 25, 2025. The Election Commission itself is not clear and is confusing all the voters. The EC should issue any information through press notes and official notification, which has complete transparency instead of putting it on social media,' the RJD leader said. The former Deputy Chief Minister said more than four crore residents of Bihar live outside and the EC should answer how they would bring them. Selection of BLOs The Leader of the Opposition in the Bihar Assembly asked on what basis the volunteers helping the BLOs were selected and the list of all the volunteers should be made public. 'On June 28, 2025, the EC talked about appointing one lakh volunteers, on July 3, 2025, it said about four lakh volunteers. What are the criteria for their selection and whether they are government or non-government people, this should also be informed,' Mr. Yadav said. He alleged that the way the EC was working, it seemed that at the last moment, the names of voters would be deleted forcefully. Earlier in the day, Mr. Yadav posted a message on social media account X, saying, 'The game of removing votes of Dalits, Backward, Extremely Backward, and minorities and adding fake votes has begun. Modi-Nitish is determined to crush the Constitution and democracy and to snatch your voting rights through the Election Commission. Seeing the defeat, these people have now become frantic. When the voter's vote itself is eliminated, what democracy and Constitution will remain?' Bihar Congress president Rajesh Kumar raised the issue that the decision to give the sole responsibility to the Election Registration Officers (ERO) was wrong. 'The powers given to the EROs are not appropriate at all. The right of one person to make a decision can reduce impartiality somewhere because anyone can influence them because they are a government person, so they will work under the pressure of the government,' Mr. Kumar said. In the advertisement, the EC said if the voters were unable to provide the required documents, the ERO could take a decision on the basis of local investigation or other documentary evidence. VIP Chief Mukesh Sahani said teachers had been put on revision work which was affecting the studies of students in government schools. CPI (ML) leader Kunal, CPI (M) MLA Awadhesh Kumar and CPI leader Ram Babu were also present during the press conference.
Time of India
33 minutes ago
- Time of India
Over 2 crore electors submit forms for electoral roll revision in state so far: EC
Patna: Altogether 2.88 crore (36.47%) of the total of 7,89,69,844 electors already enrolled have submitted their enumeration forms under the ongoing special intensive revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls in Bihar so far, the (ECI) stated Monday. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now In a press note, the ECI said that 1.18 crore forms had been collected in the past 24 hours itself, while 18 days were still left till the last date for submission of forms on July 25. The electoral roll revision work in the state has been going on since June 25. The process of online uploading of forms is also going on smoothly, and 11.26% of the total forms of voters had been uploaded on ECINET portal till 6pm on Monday. As per the ECI instructions on June 24, the draft voter list will be published on August 1. It will include the names of only those people whose enumeration forms will be received by July 25. The SIR campaign is being carried on at full speed at the grassroots level with active cooperation of the voters, the ECI statement said. The partially filled forms are available for download on and ECINET mobile app. Voters can also upload the form themselves, it said. The ECI stated that 77,895 booth-level officers (BLOs) were going door-to-door and contacting voters to get the enumeration forms filled with the documents required. Altogether 20,603 new BLOs are also being deployed to complete the process on time. About 4 lakh volunteers (govt employees, NCC cadets, NSS members etc.) are active in the field to help the elderly, disabled, sick and vulnerable voters, the EC said. Altogether 239 electoral registration officers (EROs), 963 assistant EROs, 38 district election officers and the chief electoral officer are working in all 243 assembly constituencies. Besides, 1,54,977 booth-level agents, appointed by various political parties, are actively participating in the SIR process.
The Hindu
33 minutes ago
- The Hindu
PDS workers want ration shops under single department
Demanding that the Public Distribution System (PDS) shops be brought under a single department, the Tamil Nadu Government Fair Price Shops Employees Union (TNGFSEU) on Monday staged a sit-in protest outside the Collector office here on Monday. As the ration shops were administered by different departments such as Co-operation, Food and Consumer Protection and Revenue, any plea from the workers was not reaching the officials concerned, said D. Chelladurai, State deputy president, TNGFSEU. 'If only one department administers the shops, our basic demands such as decent pay and enhanced facilities could be represented through a single window. In the current situation, due to several roadblocks in accessing the department concerned, many of our demands are not even taken into consideration by the government,' he added. The protestors also demanded equal pay for all workers of ration shops. While Tamil Nadu Civil Service Corporation (TNCSC) runs about 3,500 ration shops, the Co-operative Department runs close to 32,000 shops, the eligibility criteria for workers of the ration shops is grade 12. In this situation, the workers falling under TNCSC were paid about ₹40,000 per month, and those under the Co-operative Department only about ₹20,000, he said. Condemning the difference in pay as discriminatory, he said everyone should be brought under the same pay scale. Another demand was to link the TNCSC warehouses measuring device with the ration shops billing system. By bringing them together through a system, the discrepancies in difference of stock in the warehouses and shops could be resolved. Also, the Point of Sale (POS) machines used at ration shops to record the fingerprints of the consumer, due to high accuracy, were rejecting users with even a slight deviation of fingerprints, Mr. Chelladurai said. 'For many people, their fingerprints could fade away due nature of their work. So, in such cases, high accuracy machines could reject their fingerprints. As this has increased in recent days, the workers face delays in processing the bills and selling the products,' he further said. When the accuracy level was reduced to about 40%, with the linkage of Aadhar card to the system, the users could be identified with whatever fingerprints they had, he added.
