A senior lawyer filed a petition on behalf of Rahul Gandhi and other INDIA bloc leaders in the Supreme Court against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar on Monday, questioning the mass deletion of voters under the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise and seeking intervention in the functioning of the Election Commission.
The SIR exercise, which seeks to update electoral rolls after deleting the names of those who died or moved away, came under fresh Opposition fire after a newspaper reported that many poll body decisions had been taken without informing the other two Election Commissioners. The Congress MP, who is the face of the party’s agitation against Kumar since a newspaper report alleged that two other Election Commissioners had raised several objections to the poll body’s decision linked to the SIR exercise, has been named in the plea as the main petitioner. They are: Mallikarjun Kharge, Saugata Roy, Akhilesh Yadav, Tejashwi Yadav, Sanjay Raut, MA Baby, D Raja, Mahua Majhi, Supriya Sule and ET Mohammed Basheer. The Cockroach Janta Party, a pressure group which had forced education minister Dharmendra Pradhan’s resignation in July, has also been protesting in the national capital seeking Gyanesh Kumar’s resignation over the same issue.
10 other Congress and INDIA bloc leaders were also included in the document. Its planned march was scuttled by the Delhi Police, which detained over 3,000 supporters and put curbs on their influx into the national capital.
