Says, vote-chori biggest anti-national act BJP was committing
The Sunday Mail
· NEW DELHI।Asserting that vote chori (vote theft) was the biggest anti-national act that the BJP was committing, Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi today asked the ruling party why it had provided legal immunity to the Election Commissioners for their various acts of omission and commission.Speaking during a discussion on electoral reforms in the Lok Sabha today, Gandhi cornered the BJP for capturing various institutions, including the Election Commission of India that is directly related to conducting elections in the country, and gave some very good suggestions.
Rahul Gandhi remarked that the government does not want to implement electoral reforms. He said reforms must begin with transparency in voter rolls and the poll process, stressing that these were needed to stop ‘vote chori’. He demanded that all political parties be given machine readable voter lists a month before polling. He also sought a reversal of the law that permits destruction of CCTV footage within 45 days of elections. He said Opposition should be granted access to verify the architecture of EVMs, as it had not been shown the machines so far. He said, “Let our experts go and check the EVMs as we have not been shown the EVMs so far. Give us access to the EVMs”. He asserted that the law giving immunity to Election Commissioners will be scrapped with retrospective effect when the Opposition comes to power. “I want to assure the election commissioners that we are going to change the law retrospectively, and we are going to come and find you,” he said.
Gandhi pointed out how the BJP government had removed the Chief Justice of India from the selection panel for the Chief Election Commissioner and replaced him with the Union Home Minister. He said, as a result, with the Prime Minister and the Home Minister on one side and the Leader of Opposition on the other side, the appointment becomes completely biased.
Gandhi in his usual aggressive no holds barred style accused the BJP of indulging in ‘vote chori’ which, he said, was the biggest anti-national act. “Vote chori is an anti-national act and those across the aisle are doing an anti-national act”, he said pointing towards the treasury benches.
Maintaining that India was not only the biggest, but the greatest democracy, he said, “we are not just the biggest democracy, we are the greatest democracy… that weaves together the largest diversity”.
“Our most powerful asset, the thing that stitches us together, the entire concept of modern India, is being attacked by these people (the BJP). They are destroying it. I know they are destroying it. You know they are destroying it. And they know they are destroying it”, Gandhi remarked.
Accusing the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) of systematically capturing all the institutions, he said, after the assassination of the Father of Nation, the next project of the RSS was the capture of institutions. He pointed out how the educational institutions being captured with the Vice-Chancellors appointed just on the basis of their loyalty to the RSS rather than on the basis of their educational qualification or scientific temperament.
Second capture, he added, was the capture of the investigating agencies like the CBI, the ED and the Income Tax and the systematic placements of the compliant bureaucrats in these institutions, who were ready to target all those who opposed the RSS.
Third and the most sensitive capture, the Leader of Opposition said, was the capture of the Election Commission of India, which directly controls the election system in India. He said the BJP was damaging Indian democracy by misusing the Election Commission of India.
He asked, otherwise, why would a Prime Minister provide immunity to the Election Commissioners, something no other Prime Minister in the history of India had done. He said, the consequences were evident as the elections in Haryana and Maharashtra were stolen. He added that he had proved it citing example how a Brazilian woman’s photograph appeared 22 times in the Haryana voter list.
He asked, why was the law on CCTV footage changed to allow its destruction within 45 days of the elections. He also asked, why there were about 1.2 lakh duplicate voters in Bihar even after the SIR exercise.
