No foreign voters in Bihar SIR list; Modi brings divisive agenda: CPI(ML)

Communist Party of India (Marxist–Leninist) general secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya has welcomed the interim order of the Supreme Court on the special intensive revision (SIR) of the voters list in Bihar. He said the Election Commission of India (ECI) is forced to back off from its stand on the matter and hoped that the poll body will ensure transparency in preparing voters’ lists and provide details for the reasons of the omission of voters published in the draft list.

Countering Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s statement on Independence Day that illegal immigration is threatening the country’s demography, Mr. Bhattacharya said the SIR exercise in Bihar did not bring out a single case of illegal immigrants in the State. “PM Modi gave his longest Independence Day speech, but the important point is that the theme of Independence Day is now being reduced to partition. It is as if the government is trying to finish the incomplete agenda of partition,” he said.

He maintained that out of the 65 lakh voters who have been disenfranchised, no one was a foreign national. “But once again, Modi ji has brought back that agenda, completely unsubstantiated, the bogey of illegal immigration, infiltration. And the things that they are doing to change our demography, taking away all jobs, occupying land, getting married to women and forcing conversion. This is a total anti-immigrant agenda of the RSS and BJP. This is what led to partition, perhaps they want another partition…” he said.

He asked how the Centre concluded on the number of foreign nationals entering India illegally, when there has been no Census since 2011. “It has created a tone of terror in the country, it has created major insecurity, and when you sort of view it together with the ongoing SIR, the backdoor NRC, the ongoing so-called police verification drive, the MHA circular, so it creates before us the danger of a huge social division and the creation of a permanent category of disenfranchised people,” he said.