New Delhi | The Congress on Tuesday alleged that the West Bengal assembly polls were a "text book case of mass manipulation and rigging" which was overseen by Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, and asserted that the "puppet" has to go but the "two puppeteers" too have to be held accountable.
Congress general secretary in-charge communications Jairam Ramesh shared the screenshot of a media report which claimed that judges of more than a dozen Tribunals appointed in West Bengal on the orders of the Supreme Court to process SIR appeals, including of 27 lakh deleted electors, have highlighted glaring gaps in a digital portal set up for them by the Election Commission of India's IT division.
In his post on X, Ramesh said, "More skeletons are tumbling out of the Election Omission of India's closet." "Clearly the PM-HM (Narendra Modi-Amit Shah) strategy was to somehow capture and win the West Bengal Assembly elections at any cost. It was a text book case of mass manipulation and rigging which was overseen by the CEC," Ramesh alleged.
The puppet has of course to go but the two puppeteers too have to be held accountable, he said in an apparent reference to Kumar, and Modi and Shah.
"They stand brutally exposed and now it is only a matter of time for them to meet their reckoning," Ramesh said.
Today, MPs of the INDIA janbandhan plus other Opposition MPs, who have also been invited, will be marching peacefully to the Election Commission of India to demand the CEC's resignation, the Congress leader said.
"Looks like the Parliament complex is already under an unprecedented security siege showing the extreme nervousness of the puppeteer pair," Ramesh said.
His remarks come a day after the opposition stepped up their attack on the CEC, with the Supreme Court saying it had not approved any modifications to Form 6.
The Congress and other opposition parties demanded his immediate resignation, alleging that he betrayed the Constitution at the behest of the prime minister and home minister and unilaterally made changes to the form for the SIR process.
A bench of Chief Justice of India (CJI) Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V Mohana said, "We will examine all the decisions. If any decision is not in accordance with the law, we will annul it. You know the power of the court." The bench said "any modification to Form 6 has not been approved by us. Let's be clear. When records are produced, we would like to see who has modified it".
Form 6 is an application through which an eligible person seeks inclusion in the electoral rolls.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Monday asserted that the CEC and everyone else involved in "criminal assault on democracy" will be held accountable.
The opposition party has also alleged that the CEC "betrayed" the Constitution in letter and spirit at the behest of Prime Minister Modi and Shah.
The opposition's aggressive push on the ground comes amid a raging row over a report in The Indian Express that election commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi objected on record at least 14 times in the last 10 months to decisions and orders mostly related to the the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral roll.
Under fire over the red flags raised by two of its commissioners, the EC has asserted that differing views and observations are a part of deliberations in any institution and that all its orders carry full legal sanction and follow established statutory procedures.
