Gandhi, however, has reportedly insisted on his allegations and demanded a response from the ECI. While addressing a gathering in Bihar’s Sasaram at the launch of his 1,300 km ‘Voter Adhikar Yatra’ on Sunday, he said that he had been asked to submit an affidavit after his press conference “exposing vote chori”, but no such demand was made from BJP leaders, who had made similar claims in their pressers.Meanwhile, the CEC reiterated that the doors of the Commission are open to everyone and that the poll body is working in a “transparent manner” as part of the SIR exercise in Bihar.“The truth is that step by step all the stakeholders are committed, trying and working hard to make the SIR of Bihar a complete success. When more than seven crore voters of Bihar are standing with the Election Commission, then neither can any question mark be raised on its credibility nor on the credibility of the voters,” he asserted.Kumar also informed that 1.6 lakh Booth Level Agents (BLA) have prepared the draft voter list in Bihar and that, so far, individual voters have submitted a total of 28,370 claims and objections.According to the CEC, the main objective behind sharing the electoral roll with all political parties and candidates was to ensure that any issues could be raised in time. He also noted that since none of the political parties and their BLAs submitted any “claim or objection”, it appeared they were not examining the electoral rolls.For the past two decades, irrespective of ideology, most political parties have been flagging defects in the Electoral Rolls. Precisely to address this, the ECI has been conducting SIR in Bihar ahead of assembly elections in the state, Kumar said, while stressing that such an exercise is carried out before and after polls.In response to a question on how many Bangladeshi, Nepali and Myanmar nationals were found during the enumeration process, the CEC responded: “An intensive probe will be conducted of the Enumeration Forms, and if it is found that some people are not Indian citizens, they will not be part of the Electoral Rolls.”He also said that the ECI had complied with the Supreme Court order and, within 56 hours, “we have provided district-wise searchable lists of 65 lakh people whose names were not incorporated in the draft electoral rolls.”
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