BJP faults Opposition’s letter to CJI on Special Intensive Revision

Account subscription benefits alongside Premium Stories, Editorials, Opinions and more. Unlock these with Subscription The View From India Looking at World Affairs from the Indian perspective. First Day First Show News and reviews from the world of cinema and streaming. Today's Cache Your download of the top 5 technology stories of the day. Data Point Decoding the headlines with facts, figures, and numbers Health Matters Ramya Kannan writes to you on getting to good health, and staying there The Hindu On Books Books of the week, reviews, excerpts, new titles and features. State BJP president N. Ramchander Rao has criticised the Congress and other Opposition parties for writing to the Chief Justice of India (CJI) over the Election Commission’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR), calling it a “bad precedent” and suggesting they should have instead filed a writ petition. “It is not appropriate to drag the CJI into the issue through a letter. A common person who cannot afford court fees may write a letter that could be treated as a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) but it is surprising that senior lawyers, including Kapil Sibal and Abhishek Singhvi, are involved in this,” he said during an informal interaction with the media at the party’s State office on Wednesday. Mr. Rao asserted that the SIR exercise is not advantageous to the BJP. “Booth Level Officers are State government employees. Questioning them amounts to a lack of confidence in one’s own administration,” he said, adding that there are several judicial rulings allowing citizens to establish their citizenship through various documents. He appealed to residents of Hyderabad and the rest of Telangana to actively participate in the SIR process by submitting copies of any of the 12 approved documents, including Aadhaar and passport. However, he acknowledged concerns over the “grey area” of individuals possessing multiple identity cards but lacking a single definitive proof of citizenship. The BJP leader maintained that documents such as passports and Aadhaar cards are issued only after due verification and can therefore be used in the SIR exercise. He also noted that governments have not yet introduced a universal identity card, similar to social security systems in the United States or Europe, to conclusively establish citizenship. Even non-citizens can obtain Indian passports in certain circumstances, he said. The SIR is aimed solely at removing duplicate, fake, and deceased voters, as well as preventing multiple voting. Citing West Bengal as an example, he said 28 lakh voters were barred wh