New Delhi: Congress media and publicity chairman Pawan Khera on Saturday accused the Election Commission of introducing a “VIP voter” category in the BLO app used during Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, alleging that the move has reduced ordinary citizens to “unequal voters” and violated the constitutional principle that every vote carries the same value.
Addressing the media at the AICC office on 24 Akbar Road under the title “Hum App Ke Hain Kaun,” Khera said Baba Saheb Bhimrao Ambedkar and the Constitution’s framers had insisted that a rickshaw-puller’s vote and a billionaire’s vote must be equal. “Gautam Adani’s vote, Mukesh Ambani’s vote, my vote, your vote, the parking attendant’s vote — all must have the same value. That is no longer the case,” he said.
He cited reports in The Indian Express, Hindustan Times and Reporters Collective, and displayed WhatsApp screenshots of instructions from EROs to BLOs: “Kindly direct all BLOs to go through the list of electors to whom notices are to be issued. In case names of VIP appears in the list, they may be identified and approached…” Another message read: “All VIP voters mark karvao” and listed “Respected Cabinet Mantri Ji and family members, councillors, judges, advocates, bureaucrats, IAS, IPS, media persons, celebrities, social workers.”
Khera said the app now flags a VIP category so that chief ministers, ministers, MLAs, selected journalists and celebrities receive house visits and expedited hearings, while a vegetable seller in Shalimar Bagh or a middle-class voter must stand in line all day. “Rekha Gupta’s case can be settled in two hours at home. The rehriwala loses a day’s wage. He is not an equal voter,” he said.
He linked the alleged two-tier system to the SIR exercise, claiming more than 13 crore voters had been deprived of their right to vote across the country and that nearly half of Delhi’s names had been deleted. Khera said Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi had been warning of “vote chori” for a year and a half; recent disclosures, he claimed, proved those warnings correct.
Khera accused Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar of running a “secret mission” that was no longer secret after the two other Election Commissioners — Sandhu and Joshi — had, in his words, “spoiled the game.” He demanded that Kumar resign, turn approver and face trial, invoking Nuremberg language and saying neither Kumar, Prime Minister Narendra Modi nor Home Minister Amit Shah would “get scot-free.”
On questions about future polls in seven states, boycott and the Supreme Court, Khera said Congress was already convinced the process was not free and fair, that public support was now with the party on the issue, and that the party had “full faith” the apex court was watching and would act at the right time. All decisions taken by Kumar without consensus, he added, were “illegal and null and void.”
He rejected talk of boycott as a “distraction” and said the party was already on the streets; the public, he claimed, was joining.