Hyderabad: Union minister of state for home affairs Bandi Sanjay Kumar on Saturday challenged chief minister A Revanth Reddy and the Congress leadership to dissolve the Telangana govt and face fresh elections through ballot papers if they had doubts about the credibility of Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs).
He claimed that 13 crore voter entries were under scrutiny and not all had been deleted, as alleged by the Congress. In Telangana, he claimed that over 18 lakh people had died since 2004 and another 6.7 lakh duplicate entries needed verification. He also accused the Congress of targeting the Election Commission whenever it lost elections.
He said the exercise was necessary as it included deceased voters, duplicate registrations and people who had permanently migrated. The Union minister said the Centre would continue the SIR exercise and asserted that the BJP-led govt would pursue the NRC, women’s reservation legislation and delimitation. Reacting to the Congress protests against the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, Sanjay accused the party of opposing the exercise for political reasons and questioned its association with organisations allegedly receiving foreign funding. “Why is the Congress opposing the removal of bogus votes and the names of deceased voters? Does it want to win elections using such votes?” he asked. Sanjay alleged that illegal immigrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan had managed to get their names included in voter lists in some constituencies.
Addressing a media conference at the BJP state office on Saturday, Sanjay said the SIR exercise was aimed at ensuring that every eligible citizen had voting rights while removing duplicate, deceased and ineligible voters.