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New Delhi, Oct 9 (IANS) Amid Congress’ strong criticism of the Election Commission’s special intensive review (SIR) in Bihar, senior party leader P Chidambaram on Thursday launched a fresh attack on the Election Commission over alleged irregularities in the ‘voter purification’ campaign ahead of the state assembly elections.
Chidambaram on Thursday raised six questions on his social media handle, raising doubts on the integrity of the SIR and demanding that the poll panel give proper answers ‘in the interest of transparency and fairness’.
However, he said that he is not accusing the ECI of any wrongdoing, but the people of India as well as Bihar deserve to know the answers to the various doubts, confusions and doubts related to the voter verification drive which was hastily pushed ahead just before the elections.
Chidambaram tried to find answers to the questions – “What is the estimate of the adult population of Bihar according to the Government of India? What share of the adult population of Bihar has been included in the voter list? Is it 90.7 percent? What about the remaining 9.3 percent adult population? Why have they not been included in the voter list?”
He also asked, “How many names are ambiguous in the voter list? Is the number around 24,000? How many house numbers are blank or clearly invalid in the voter list? Is the number more than 2,00,000? How many names included in the voter list are double or duplicate entries? Is the number around 5,20,000?”
ECI published the final voter list for Bihar elections on September 30, releasing the final list of 7.42 crore registered voters.
However, this has been strongly opposed by the Congress-led opposition, which has accused the Election Commission of colluding with the ruling party to manipulate the election results.
It claimed that at least 10 per cent of the deletion of names of about 67.3 lakh voters took place in only 15 of the 243 assembly seats.
It also asked the Election Commission to explain why it is not providing a consolidated list based on the deleted voters and booth, and the reasons for the deletions.
–IANS
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