Sachin Pilot accuses BJP of misleading voters over illegal immigrants

Senior Congress leader Sachin Pilot on Thursday said the Bharatiya Janata Party was misleading people in the name of illegal immigrants casting their votes, and using it as a pretext to disenfranchise genuine voters from disadvantaged sections.

At a press conference in Chhattisgarh’s Jagdalpur, the All India Congress Committee in charge of Chhattisgarh asserted that the party did not want any illegal immigrant to vote but questioned the role of the Election Commission of India in conducting the ongoing Special Intensive Revision or SIR of electoral rolls and the overall fairness of the electoral process in the country. The SIR is currently underway in Chhattisgarh, and Mr. Pilot and senior State leaders were on a two-day visit to the Bastar region to create awareness among voters.

“We don’t want any infiltrators to enter India illegally. But I want to ask how many illegal immigrants has this BJP government in Delhi expelled from our country in the last 11 years? Please share those figures. Whenever elections come, infiltrators come to Bihar, Maharashtra, and Haryana. Then, when the next election comes, they’ll go to Assam. There’s a discrepancy between your words and actions. How many times have questions been asked in Parliament? No clear figures have been provided. People are being misled. If there is a Dalit, backward, helpless, poor, or uneducated person in any corner of this country or Chhattisgarh, is he an illegal immigrant?” he said.

He said that people from these sections were struggling to make their ends meet and did not have the time, lacked the means to gather documents and argue with “officials about whether their names are included” in the rolls, adding that the Congress party is on the ground today to protect them.

Raising questions on the SIR process, Mr. Pilot cited the example of a three-time MLA from Chhattisgarh whose name was missing from the voter list of his native village and earlier events in Bihar. Mr. Pilot sought to know why the Election Commission was not acting on documents and data regarding alleged voter list fraud presented by the Congress.

“The question arises how lakhs of names were removed from the Bihar voter list? Rahul Gandhi ji held a press conference showing evidence of vote theft and deletion of names. Unfortunately, the EC did not even consider ordering an inquiry,” he said.