The use and abuse of Form 7

The world's largest democracy has been brought to global attention with the two Election Commissioners themselves having come out against Chief Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, highlighting the unnatural and unethical trends in the drastic voter list reform process. The opposition and the youth of the country led by the Cockoach Janta Party (CJP) have launched an uncompromising protest against the Modi government's move to save face by making Gyanesh Kumar a temporary scapegoat. The inner workings of the reforms being implemented under the pretext of democracy with slogans like SIR, delimitation, and One Nation One Vote have now been largely exposed.  It is in the background of such trends that Opposition leader Rahul Gandhi said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah are boasting that the BJP government will achieve stability at the Centre and in the states where it is in power, under cover of such 'reforms' being introduced by the government.  These 'legal violations of law' that make a mockery of both democracy and elections are being carried out by highlighting their fairness and security of both. The ongoing SIR hunt and mass deletions in various states make it clear that this is intended to give the BJP perpetuity in power. What the Sangh Parivar masters show are being carried out even more smartly by their disciples. Without waiting for the Election Commission, the BJP itself has become the agents of voter list manipulation in the states.

News that came out recently have brought to light how party workers themselves have come forward to erase the names of a section of voters in Vijayapura (old Bijapur) and Belagavi in Karnataka. The complaint received from the Belagavi North assembly constituency show that BJP workers are bringing in Form-7 application forms in bulk for them to voluntarily get deleted or to exclude those who have entered the voter list illegally and forcing Booth Level Officers (BLOs) to sign them. Complaints were received from four polling stations in Veerabhadra Nagar and two in Shettigali School in this constituency. Two people claiming to be from the Belagavi City Corporation office gave them bundles of Form-7 and asked them to erase Muslim names from the SIR list,  as reported by 'The Hindu' newspaper. But the BLOs were not ready to comply with the order to return the forms signed with their names deleted in a hurry. They took the stand that they could not delete the voters since they knew them personally and had been living in the area for years. At that time, they called the person they introduced themselves as the Electoral Registration Officer (ERO) and handed over the phone, and he 'ordered' the BLO to sign. However, what ERO chief Udayakumar Basavanthappa says is that no such order was given to anyone and that someone must have used his name falsely.

A person can be removed from the list through Form-7 on the grounds of death, not reaching adulthood, not being at the address or permanently moving, being enrolled elsewhere, and not having citizenship. It is by using this loophole that the BJP has directly come forward with a campaign to find and remove Muslims from the list. The application, which is filled with the names and details of those to be removed, is either filled in with the name of the person raising the issue or left blank. Then, the name of the proposer is added as they wish. Such application packets brought in this way happened to be brought also before Mirzab Sanadi, who is also the chairman of Veerabhadra School and has been working as a booth level agent for 15 years, to sign. When it was checked, the names of Sanadi, his brother, and relatives were found in it. The manipulation does not end there. In most of the complainants' column, only one name has been filled. When the person at that address was contacted, it transpired that he had never filed such a complaint. This illustrates how meticulously the frauds are organized. The party cadres, who copy the devious games that the union government systematically plays using the Commission, are creating room for fraud in their own way. Thus, the mission that the Sangh Parivar party and their governments have taken up together is the same: to hunt down the Muslim community and make them invisible from all official documents. The only way out is for the streets to wake up, as the INDIA  alliance and the country's youth groups are shouting against the destructive tendencies that are leading to the disintegration of the country.