New Delhi, Nov 23 (IANS) In a scathing attack on the Election Commission of India (ECI), Congress leader and Lok Sabha Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi has termed the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls as “no reform but an imposed oppression”, linking it directly to the deaths of 16 Booth Level Officers (BLOs) over nearly three weeks.

Heart attacks, crippling stress, and suicides have claimed these lives, with Rahul Gandhi alleging the ECI’s rushed, paperwork-heavy process is a “deliberate ploy” to harass citizens and enable voter fraud.

“Under the guise of SIR, chaos has been unleashed across the country — the result? In three weeks, 16 BLOs have lost their lives. Heart attacks, stress, suicides — SIR is no reform, it’s an imposed tyranny,” he wrote in a post on X, attaching a newspaper clipping highlighting the mounting fatalities.

He accused the ECI of forcing voters to sift through “thousands of scanned pages of a 22-year-old voter list” to locate their names, designed to “tire out genuine voters and allow vote chori to continue unabated”.

The SIR, aimed at cleansing electoral rolls by removing duplicates, deceased, and shifted voters ahead of 2026 Assembly polls in states like West Bengal, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Puducherry, is underway in nine states and three Union Territories, including Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, and Lakshadweep.

Phase-I of the SIR concluded in Bihar, with the final voter roll slated for February 7, 2026.

Yet, critics decry the 30-day deadline as unrealistic, burdening underpaid, often untrained BLOs — mostly teachers, anganwadi workers, and volunteers — with digitising millions of entries manually.

The Congress leader contrasted India’s global software prowess with the ECI’s “jungle of paperwork”, urging a shift to “digital, searchable, machine-readable” lists for true transparency.

“If intentions were clear, the ECI would prioritise accountability over this hasty rush,” he added, calling BLO deaths “collateral damage” in a “conspiracy to sacrifice democracy for power”.

“This isn’t failure—it’s a plot,” he concluded, ensuring Congress’s fight for electoral integrity.

–IANS

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