Congress claims 65,255 voters were deleted from five constituencies in Dimapur and Ghaspani following the Special Intensive Revision.
DIMAPUR — The Dimapur District Congress Committee (DDCC) has claimed that 65,255 voters were deleted from five Assembly constituencies in Dimapur and Chümoukedima districts following the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, describing the deletions as an “insult to citizens”.
Addressing a press conference at Congress Bhavan in Dimapur, DDCC president Kutoho Chishi said the number of voters in Dimapur-I, Dimapur-II and Dimapur-III had declined from 1,25,703 before the SIR to 89,074 after the exercise, a reduction of 36,629.
Similarly, the number of voters in Ghaspani-I and Ghaspani-II had come down from 1,09,941 to 81,313, a reduction of 28,628, he said. The five constituencies together recorded a reduction of 65,255 voters, according to the figures presented by Chishi.
He said Dimapur-I, II and III fell under Dimapur district, while Ghaspani-I and II were under Chümoukedima district.
Chishi questioned the BJP-led government at the Centre over what he described as a “duplicacy policy” in the name of SIR, and said the deletion of genuine voters’ names was unacceptable. He maintained that such deletions should not happen in Dimapur or Nagaland.
Appealing to affected voters not to worry, Chishi said the Congress was ready to assist them and asked them to approach the party and its booth-level agents (BLAs) at their respective polling stations. He also appealed to Booth Level Officers (BLOs) and election officials to accept complaints from genuine voters facing anomalies in the revision process.
He expressed concern that the demand for documents such as birth certificates was affecting genuine voters, particularly those in the 70-80 age group who did not have proper documents. He said the SIR should not be implemented in Nagaland in its present form.
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Meanwhile, All India Congress Committee (AICC) SIR observer Banna Gupta alleged large-scale irregularities in the ongoing revision of electoral rolls in Nagaland and other parts of the country, accusing the BJP-led Centre of attempting to undermine democracy.
Gupta said the AICC had constituted a nationwide observer group to examine alleged irregularities in the SIR exercise and that he had visited Nagaland as part of the initiative.
Claiming that a large number of names had been deleted from around 13.57 lakh voters in Nagaland, he alleged that the revision was being used for political purposes rather than simply to purify electoral rolls.
Gupta also alleged that the BJP had resorted to a “well-planned conspiracy” in the name of SIR after losing elections in several states. He claimed that the Congress, under the leadership of Rahul Gandhi, Mallikarjun Kharge and K C Venugopal, was fighting to protect democracy.
He further alleged “large-scale vote theft” and drew a comparison between former Chief Election Commissioner T N Seshan and the present CEC, Gyanesh Kumar.
Gupta announced that the Congress would hold a protest at Delhi’s Red Fort on November 1 under the leadership of Rahul Gandhi against what he termed the “dictatorial government”.