RJD mulls boycotting Bihar poll over SIR

RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav on Thursday said his party was considering boycotting the upcoming Assembly elections in Bihar, citing “lack of transparency” in the special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls being carried out by the Election Commission. Tejashwi, who is the Bihar Leader of Opposition, made the remarks outside the Assembly in Patna. He said the RJD’s allies could also consider joining the boycott. “It has already been decided to delete lakhs of names from the voter list. When the same voters elected Prime Minister Narendra Modi and successive governments, everything was fine. What changed all of a sudden? They have resorted to dishonesty. It’s no point contesting the elections when people cannot vote,” said Tejashwi. The RJD leader said the deletion of 50-80 lakh voters from the electoral rolls was “alarming”. “So many deletions will mean 3,000 to 4,000 names will be cut from the list in each booth…. This is a conspiracy by the ruling NDA to influence the poll outcome in their favour,” he said. Tejashwi said if the NDA wanted to win elections through fraudulent means, there was no point in holding the elections at all. RJD ally Congress also backed Tejashwi’s remarks. “We will seriously consider the option of boycotting the elections. If voters are denied their right to franchise, what remains of democracy in this country?” asked senior Congress leader and MLA Shakeel Ahmad Khan. He alleged that booth-level officers were putting their own signatures and thumb impressions to fill enumeration forms instead of actual voters. The RJD has already moved the Supreme Court against the SIR process. On Thursday, members of the grand alliance wore black clothes to the Assembly as a symbolic protest against the exercise. During house-to-house visits, poll officials have found more than 52 lakh voters “missing” from their addresses.