"Fear of crushing defeat in upcoming polls": BJP slams INDIA bloc over Bihar electoral roll revision

New Delhi [India], July 3 (ANI): Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) National General Secretary Tarun Chugh on Thursday termed the meeting of a delegation of the INDIA bloc leaders with the Election Commission of India over the Bihar voter list overhaul as an "insult" to democracy and India's institutions.
The BJP leader also claimed that the INDI alliance is in "deep shock" due to the "fear of defeat" in the upcoming Bihar assembly elections.
"The INDI Alliance is in deep shock due to the fear of their crushing defeat in the upcoming Bihar assembly elections. The leaders of the INDI Alliance aim to discredit the Election Commission, a world-renowned, independent, and impartial institution"
"Actually, they know they are going to lose, so now they want to blame the Election Commission... This is an insult to democracy and the institutions of India...", Chugh told ANI.
A day earlier, delegation of INDIA bloc leaders from 11 political parties met with the Election Commission of India (ECI) in the national capital to register their opposition to the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls currently underway in Bihar, calling it the "worst attack on the basic structure of the Constitution."
Congress leader Abhishek Manu Singhvi, part of the delegation that met Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar and Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi, questioned the timing of the SIR exercise, noting that it is being carried out only months before the upcoming Assembly elections.
"Firstly, the last revision was in 2003. For 22 years, more than four of five Bihar elections have happened. Were all those elections faulty?... Secondly the Special Intensive Revision which was held in 2003, was held one year before the Lok Sabha Elections, two years before the Assembly election. Today you are having in July, a maximum period of one or two months for an electoral revision exercise of the second most largest electoral populated state in India, Bihar...You want to have it in one and a half to two months," the Congress leader told reporters after the meeting.
Representatives of the Communist Party of India, CPI (Marxist-Leninist), Samajwadi Party, Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar), Rashtriya Janata Dal, Congress and other parties were present.
The ECI has claimed that the SIR is only meant to verify voters and to identify any 'ineligible voters' ahead of the Assembly elections which are expected to be held later this year in Bihar.
However, multiple political parties part of the Opposition, including Congress and Bihar's Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), have raised objections to the exercise, claiming that it will be used to deny people their constitutional rights.
The Bihar Legislative Assembly elections are expected to be held later this year, however no official date has been announced by the ECI as of yet. (ANI)