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| Protest all you want, Gyanesh Kumar won’t resign, says Union Minister | | | Early Times Report
Jammu, Oct 11: As opposition parties escalate protests over the deletion of names from electoral rolls, Union Minister of State for Social Justice and Empowerment Ramdas Athawale on Sunday came out firmly in support of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, declaring that no amount of agitation would force his resignation.
Addressing a press conference in Srinagar, Athawale defended the Election Commission’s revision of voter lists and accused the opposition of politicising the issue to corner the government. At the same time, he acknowledged that mistakes can creep into such a massive exercise and said they must be corrected.
Athawale said that, after verification, the Commission has removed roughly 13 crore names from voter lists across the country. He attributed the deletions to migration from original places of residence, registration at more than one location, prolonged non-participation in voting and the death of electors.
Breaking down the figure, he claimed that about six crore people had migrated from their native places, around one crore voters were registered at multiple locations, and nearly 2.8 crore entries pertained to deceased voters. These numbers are based on the minister’s statement and could not be independently verified.
The broad categories he named match those used in the Commission’s revision exercise, which targets absent, shifted, dead and duplicate (ASDD) entries. Supporters of the exercise have separately cited figures of about 2.89 crore deceased and 1.01 crore duplicate voters, though these too come from partisan briefings and not from an independently audited source.
Turning to the opposition, Athawale accused Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi and other parties of levelling allegations against the Commission to embarrass the government. Protest, he said, is the opposition’s democratic right, but inconveniencing ordinary citizens in its name is unjustified.
Rejecting charges of large-scale rigging, he argued that the presence of candidates’ representatives at polling stations and the oversight of counting make widespread manipulation difficult. He also described Gandhi’s stance as contrary to the Constitution and accused the opposition of seeking political mileage.
In a sharper aside, Athawale mocked the so-called “Cockroach Janata Party,” asking why a party that had agitated in support of students over the NEET paper leak was now taking to the streets against the Election Commission.
On protests at Jantar Mantar, he said restrictions were in force and participants could face arrest. Recalling his own agitations against atrocities on Dalits in Maharashtra, he noted that demonstrators had faced police action and curbs under earlier governments as well. He objected to alleged attempts to breach barricades and clashes with police, saying that police intervention may be necessary to maintain law and order in such situations.
Even as he backed the Commission, Athawale appealed for transparency and for safeguarding the voting right of every eligible citizen. Anyone who believes their name was wrongly dropped, he said, can apply to have it restored.
His remarks come amid a heated national debate over the revision exercise, which the government’s supporters defend as a long-overdue cleansing of rolls and which opposition leaders have attacked as a threat to the integrity of elections. |
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