India opposition bloc demands electoral-roll transparency and ballot voting

Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge has urged India’s opposition INDIA bloc to demand greater transparency in electoral-roll revisions and the use of ballots instead of electronic voting machines in future elections. Kharge made the proposals on Wednesday at an INDIA bloc meeting in New Delhi attended by Congress leaders Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi, TMC chief Mamata Banerjee and representatives of several opposition parties. He said the bloc should seek the use of the electoral roll prepared before the Special Intensive Revision, or SIR, in future elections.

He also called for constituency-level and booth-level information on additions, deletions and corrections to be made public. Kharge said voters should receive notice and reasons before their names were removed and should have access to an effective appeal process. He also urged protection for eligible voters who might be excluded because of administrative failures, inadequate documents or lack of awareness.

The Congress president accused Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar of failing to address opposition concerns and called for his resignation. He alleged that electoral rolls had been interfered with and said the Election Commission had not adequately responded to complaints about voter-list changes and electronic voting machines. Kharge claimed that 13.3 crore voters had been removed from the rolls during the revision.

The supplied material presents this as his assertion and does not include a response from the Election Commission. He said the opposition parties should leave the meeting with a joint programme of action and defend the principle of “one person, one vote, one value”. Kharge argued that no genuine citizen should be pushed out of the electoral process through an opaque or inadequately supervised exercise, and said an independent Election Commission was essential to credible elections.