NEW DELHI: Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh on Thursday alleged that the election process had been “thoroughly compromised and vitiated” and accused chief election commissioner (CEO) Gyanesh Kumar of implementing what he termed the “Method of Disenfranchising Indians (MODI)”.In an a post on X, Ramesh, citing Indian Express report, said the Goa CEO had written to the ECI eight times in seven days seeking the inclusion of 97 voters deleted by the ECINet software. He also alleged that EROs had confirmed the voters were eligible.Ramesh further alleged that access to the ECINet system had been restricted for EROs and other electoral officials, citing the reported objections raised by Sandhu and Joshi. The two Election Commissioners had reportedly objected 14 times over 10 months to decisions and orders related to the SIR process.Goa opposition demands rollbackGoa Forward Party president Vijai Sardesai separately demanded the immediate restoration of the names of all voters deleted from the electoral roll, except those who have died.He said elections in Goa are often decided by narrow margins, sometimes by fewer than 100 votes, and argued that voter deletions could therefore affect the outcome of the 2027 assembly elections. Sardesai said there was now little time for the Election Commission to conduct the SIR afresh before the polls and called for the entire exercise to be rolled back.However, the BJP has rejected the Opposition’s allegations, accusing it of running a campaign to discredit constitutional institutions.
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The Election Commission of India’s (ECI) Special Intensive Revision (SIR), which began in Bihar in June 2025 as an exercise to clean up electoral rolls, has resulted in more than 13 crore names being excluded from the draft rolls across 30 states and Union Territories.The Indian Express investigation revealed that the two commissioners formally objected at least 14 times over 10 months to decisions made by the three-member Election Commission under CEC Gyanesh Kumar.Their objections covered issues including voter registration, deletion of names, changes to Form 6 and the centralisation of electoral-roll databases.