Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader and Leader of Opposition in Bihar Assembly Tejashwi Yadav on Sunday accused the Election Commission of India (ECI) of functioning as a “cell” of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), claiming that its credibility among citizens had collapsed.
Speaking at a press conference in Araria during the ongoing Voter Adhikar Yatra, Yadav said, “Election Commission has become a ‘Godi Commission’ now and is working like the BJP’s cell. Rahul Gandhi and I have embarked on this Yatra to save democracy, the Constitution and the right to vote. At the grassroots, even in villages, people say the EC’s credibility is over.”
Criticising the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of voter rolls in Bihar, Yadav alleged large-scale irregularities, including genuine voters being listed as deceased. “About 50 voters’ names have been deleted in every booth. We have presented evidence in the Supreme Court of people who are alive being shown as dead,” he said.
The RJD leader also hit back at Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent comments in Gaya about “infiltrators,” arguing that the poll body itself had no such classification in its records. “No one is better at rumour-mongering than the Prime Minister. The PM said the EC is working to ward off infiltrators. But in the EC’s categories and in its affidavit before the Supreme Court, there is no mention of infiltrators,” Yadav stated.
At a rally in Gaya on Friday, PM Modi had reiterated his Independence Day warning about “infiltrators,” saying their rising numbers were a threat to the country’s demography, particularly in Bihar’s border regions. He assured that the NDA government would not allow illegal immigrants to “take away opportunities meant for Indians.”
Earlier in the day, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, also part of the Voter Adhikar Yatra, had alleged that the SIR process was an “institutionalised way” of stealing votes, claiming lakhs of names were deleted from electoral rolls in Bihar.
The Voter Adhikar Yatra, led jointly by Opposition leaders, is aimed at highlighting alleged irregularities in the voter list revision exercise.
