Rahul Gandhi calls SIR ‘imposed tyranny’ as 16 BLOs die during voter roll overhaul

New Delhi: Rahul Gandhi has launched a fierce attack on the Election Commission of India (ECI), denouncing the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls as “no reform but an imposed tyranny” and linking it to the deaths of 16 Booth Level Officers (BLOs) over nearly three weeks.

The Congress leader and Lok Sabha Leader of Opposition said heart attacks, severe stress and suicides had claimed the lives of the BLOs, blaming what he called a rushed, excessively paperwork-driven exercise. He alleged that the SIR process was a “deliberate ploy” to harass citizens and facilitate 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 on X, sharing a newspaper clipping that detailed the rising number of fatalities.

Rahul Gandhi further accused the ECI of compelling voters to search through “thousands of scanned pages of a 22-year-old voter list” to find their names, claiming the process was crafted to “tire out genuine voters and allow vote chori to continue unabated”.

The SIR exercise, intended to clean up electoral rolls by removing duplicate, deceased and shifted voters ahead of the 2026 Assembly elections in states such as West Bengal, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry, is currently being implemented in nine states and three Union Territories, including Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Lakshadweep.

Phase I of the revision has been completed in Bihar, with the final electoral roll scheduled to be published on 7 February 2026.

Critics argue that the 30-day deadline for the SIR is impractical and places an excessive burden on underpaid and often inadequately trained BLOs, many of whom are teachers, anganwadi workers and volunteers tasked with manually digitising millions of entries.

Highlighting India’s global reputation in software and information technology, the Congress leader contrasted this with what he described as the ECI’s “jungle of paperwork”, and called for a transition to “digital, searchable, machine-readable” electoral rolls to ensure genuine transparency.

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

“This isn't failure—it's a plot,” he concluded, vowing that the Congress would continue its fight for electoral integrity.

(Inputs from IANS)