Bihar SIR: As EC digs in heels and Tejashwi threatens poll boycott, all eyes on SC

As the Supreme Court’s crucial July 28 hearing on the petitions challenging the special intensive revision (SIR) of Bihar’s electoral rolls draws near, the Opposition and the Election Commission (EC) have both hardened their stance on the issue.

With the poll panel having informed the Supreme Court through an affidavit of its strong reservations against considering the Aadhaar card, the ration card and the Voter ID as valid documents for fresh voter enumeration, sources told The Federal that the July 28 hearing will have the counsel for petitioners press for a blanket stay on the entire SIR process.

Also read: Chaos rules Bihar SIR; Opposition poll boycott in the offing? Capital Beat

It may be recalled that on July 10, after hearing preliminary arguments by petitioners in the case, a partial working days Bench of the apex court had directed the EC to “consider” Aadhaar, ration card and Voter ID, in addition to the 11 other documents already listed by the EC as acceptable, for purposes of voter enumeration while allowing the poll panel to carry on with the SIR. Though the EC had accepted the court’s directive after loud protestations during the hearing, it later cited in an affidavit filed with the court on July 21 various reasons for its inability to accept the three documents as proof of a voter’s bona fides.

EC toughens stand on SIR

Since the two-judge Bench of Justices Sudhanshu Dhulia and Joymalya Bagchi had given the six key petitioners – electoral watchdog Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), RJD MP Manoj Kumar Jha, Trinamool Congress (TMC) MP Mahua Moitra, leaders of nine other political parties of the Opposition’s INDIA bloc, activist Yogendra Yadav and People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) – the liberty to seek a stay when the matter is put up before a regular Bench on July 28.

As such, with the EC having toughened its stance since on going ahead with the SIR exactly as per the procedure it had laid down in its June 24 order and dismissing all concerns expressed by the Opposition as “misleading”, the petitioners, it is learnt, will use the July 28 hearing to press for a “stay on the entire SIR exercise instead of seeking concessions in the process announced by the Election Commission”.

Also read: Bihar SIR: Public hearing exposes citizens’ hardships; panel criticises EC

The counsel for petitioners, sources told The Federal, also plan to put forth arguments to “demolish the EC’s claim, made in its affidavit, that the SIR is not about verifying citizenship” and “contest the EC’s decision of seeking documents to prove a voter’s citizenship under the devious claim that it is doing so merely because the Constitution mandates that only Indian citizens can vote in an Indian election”.

A senior MP, who is also among the petitioners representing a key INDIA bloc party, told The Federal that if the July 28 hearing ends with a favourable order for the EC, the Opposition will then “seriously consider boycotting the Bihar polls” as suggested by former Bihar deputy chief minister and RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav.

Tejashwi's boycott threat stuns many

Tejashwi, who is the widely presumed Chief Minister face of the Opposition’s RJD-led mahagathbandhan (Grand Alliance) in Bihar, had stunned many on Wednesday (July 23) when he made a fleeting mention of his party “considering” to boycott the Bihar polls if the SIR is not stopped. Sources in the Grand Alliance told The Federal that Tejashwi’s assertion had caught not just RJD’s allies but many within Tejashwi’s own party by surprise as there had been “no serious discussion” with the mahagathbandhan at the time to build a consensus on boycotting the polls.

Also read: CEC Gyanesh Kumar defends Bihar SIR; says dead, migrated can't be on voter list

However, the RJD leader is learnt to have impressed upon his allies – the Congress, the CPI, CPM, CPI-MLL and the Vikassheel Insaan Party (VIP) – later on Wednesday that they needed to “step up the pressure” for scuttling the SIR “before it is too late”.

By the time Tejashwi reiterated his threat on Thursday (July 24), the Bihar leadership of the Congress as well as the CPI-MLL and the VIP had grudgingly come on board while the other Left parties chose to keep a studied silence on the issue – neither rejecting nor confirming the possibility of a boycott. In Delhi, the INDIA bloc parties continued their protest against the Bihar SIR on Thursday morning at the Parliament complex with even Congress Parliamentary Party chief Sonia Gandhi joining Opposition MPs at Parliament’s Makar Dwar to demand a roll back of the electoral roll revision.

In fact, when Tejashwi met media persons in Patna on Thursday to reassert the inevitability of a boycott “if the SIR is not stopped”, he ensured that he was flanked by Congress’ legislative party chief in the Bihar Assembly, Shakeel Ahmed Khan, as well as MLAs from the RJD, Congress and the CPI-MLL. Accusing the poll panel of a “conspiracy” to help the NDA return to power in Bihar, Tejashwi said that if there was no intention to fold democratic, free and fair elections then the Opposition will “have to think about boycotting (the polls)” and that the incumbent government could simply be “given an extension without any election being conducted”.

Rahul's accusation against EC

In a telephonic conversation with The Federal, Khan confirmed that the issue of boycotting the election had indeed been discussed among mahagathbandhan allies and there was a “broad consensus” that this would be “the last resort if all our other efforts, including the petitions filed in the Supreme Court, fail to stop the SIR”.

Also read: JDU issues show-cause notice to MP Giridhari Yadav for criticising SIR

A source close to Tejashwi also said that the former deputy chief minister “has not said that we will boycott the election but that we will consider if we should boycott if all avenues of getting justice are closed... so the idea is on the table but this does not mean that a final call in the matter has already been taken; we are of course convinced that we have a good case before the SC and will get justice there; we have to see what happens on July 28 and then we will go ahead with consensus on our next steps”.

Sources said Tejashwi had also communicated to Congress leader Rahul Gandhi his view that it was high time for the Opposition to “make a bold statement” against the “arbitrary and unconstitutional” decisions of the poll panel that were being “taken at the behest of the BJP”. “Tejashwi is firmly of the view that if we cannot get the SIR stopped then there is no point for us in contesting an election that has already been compromised. This view has been communicated to all our allies along with the message that questioning manipulations by the EC while continuing to participate in the polls strengthens the BJP’s charge of the Opposition being hypocritical,” a senior RJD leader told The Federal.

The senior RJD leader added that while Rahul, the Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha, had been consistent in pointing out the many malpractices being applied by the EC to “steal elections for the BJP”, the “sheer scale of the assault that the SIR was dealing on democracy and the brazenness with which the Election Commission was now speaking the BJP’s language had made it clear that merely criticising the electoral system was no longer an option; we have to scale up our resistance to make it clear that this will not be tolerated anymore”.

21.6 lakh 'deceased electors'

Rahul, on his part, has not yet publicly endorsed Tejashwi’s boycott call, but on both Wednesday and Thursday, he stridently opposed the SIR while reiterating his charge about elections being “stolen” in India under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s regime and asserting that he would “prove this in black and white soon”.

The EC, of course, has not budged an inch and continues to justify its hugely controversial voter roll revision. On Thursday, in a statement that was laden with saffron political overtone, the EC said, “should the Election Commission, getting misled by some people, pave the way for some to cast fake votes in the name of deceased voters, voters who have migrated permanently, voters who have got their votes registered at two places, fake voters or foreign voters, going against the Constitution, first in Bihar and then in the entire country?”

With the deadline for voter enumeration under the SIR ending on Friday, the EC has claimed that 99 per cent of Bihar’s over 7.9 crore electors had been covered as part of the exercise that began on July 1 and that the list of electors who had not filled the forms, were deceased or had permanently migrated outside Bihar had also been shared with political parties on July 20.

A press note released by the EC on Thursday evening claimed that the booth level agents carrying out the enumeration process had reported as many as 21.6 lakh “deceased electors”, 31.5 lakh electors who had “permanently migrated”, seven lakh electors who are “registered at more than one place” and one lakh electors who are still “untraceable”. Additionally, the EC said forms of “fewer than seven lakh electors have still not been received” while forms of 7.21 crore electors – 91.32 per cent of Bihar’s total electorate – had been “received and digitised” to be included in the Draft Electoral Roll, which is scheduled to be published on August 1.