Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) president and union minister Chirag Paswan has dismissed the Opposition's criticism of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls being undertaken by the Election Commission of India as "politically motivated" and termed it an attempt to create a false narrative by linking the exercise to the National Register of Citizens.
Paswan, who recently announced that he will contest the Bihar Assembly elections, pointed out how the Opposition parties had raised multiple complaints regarding alleged inconsistencies in electoral rolls in states like Haryana and Maharashtra, where they lost to the BJP, but were up in arms when the EC was "trying to rectify it".
"The criticism, I believe, is politically-motivated. It's the Opposition that has been crying after every election that the voter list is inaccurate, there are duplications and that there are names wrongly added. They have made these complaints repeatedly. And when the EC is trying to rectify it, you have a problem," Paswan said in an interview to The Indian Express.
Paswan, however, conceded that there are issues people may face in both rural and urban areas of Bihar as far as availability of documents mandated by the EC is concerned. However, he said political parties were there on the ground to help people with this.
"The Opposition is creating a false narrative here and they are not making their karyakartas to go to the houses to help the voters at the booth level. We have Booth Level Agents (BLAs) who help voters and Booth Level Officers (BLOs). Of course, they (BLAs) are not in big numbers, but they are coordinating between BLOs and voters," Paswan said.
"The question remains if you are fine with people living in our country without proper documents or people about whom you don’t know whether they belong to this country. Are you okay with ghuspaithiye (infiltrators) living among us?" he said, adding that the process of sanitizing the electoral lists must begin at some point.
Paswan also dismissed the Opposition's allegations that the SIR exercise is like the "NRC through backdoor". "Opposition has a problem with anything and everything that the central government does. They do not believe in any constitutional posts. Of course, it’s not NRC. It’s a process that has been done on a regular basis, maybe not so extensively. The process of sanitisation needs to start somewhere at some point."
Paswan, who contested the 2020 Assembly polls outside the NDA and damaged the JD(U)'s poll performance, also downplayed his recent criticism of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on the issue of law and order.
"Incidents like these (recent killings) definitely shake you up. On a regular basis we are seeing some one or other getting murdered in rural parts of Bihar. Law and order becomes a concern, especially this being a forte of our Chief Minister Nitish Kumar ji. I believe there is some kind of conspiracy happening against him. I am sure he has the ability to get things under control," Paswan said.
He further said that there was no vacancy for the post of chief minister in Bihar and that his entry in Bihar's politics should not be seen as his desire for power.
"I would love to contest the Assembly elections. I have no intention to become the Deputy CM. But of course after the elections, I would like to have one of my karyakartas representing the state as Deputy CM," he added.
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