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Rajya Sabha member and senior lawyer Kapil Sibal suggested on Saturday that the Election Commission should file a defamation case if the recent reports of dissent within the panel, and the allegations of “vote chori” (theft) levelled by the Opposition, are incorrect. In turn, he said, a case of “treason” was made out if decisions were taken centrally by the EC to delete voters, among some other moves that are facing scrutiny.
“So obviously instructions have gone from those who are controlling the software in Delhi, in the Election Commission, to [delete the voters]. “Why do you want children all over the country and the nation to believe that you are an Election Commission that is not performing your constitutional obligations? Why do you want people to even have that suspicion?
Sibal pointed towards West Bengal, where over 25 lakh voters from earlier rolls were excluded in the SIR citing ‘logical discrepancies’: “To the extent in which decisions [by tribunals] have been taken in West Bengal… 91-94% of the votes were wrongly deleted.
“It’s as simple as that,” Sibal asserted in an interview with NDTV’s Vishnu Som. He said the EC “should take some legal action” if the report by The Indian Express , which said two election commissioners had objected to certain moves of the Gyanesh Kumar-led poll body, was “inconsistent with the record”. “The fact [is] that there is no signature on that press [note] by any of the three commissioners,” said Sibal, who served as minister in Manmohan Singh’s Congress-led UPA government before the BJP led by Narendra Modi came to power in 2014. He said the IE report had pointed out that local electoral registration officers (EROs) were denied access to the central portal ECINET in Goa, for instance. And this is very, very serious,” said Sibal, who was elected to the Rajya Sabha as an Independent with backing from UP’s main Opposition, Samajwadi Party. He said the EC needed to address all the points being raised as younger citizens, in particular, are agitated. Sibal said, claiming that “this is all happening after 2014”.
