Opposition slams election commission over audit of voter rolls in UP. | Representational image The Opposition in Uttar Pradesh - the Samajwadi Party and Congress - have hit out at UP Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Navdeep Rinwa after the latter ordered the audit of Form 6, 7, and 8 applications entered by computer assistants since April 10 this year amid a row over the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise. The Congress slammed the poll body over the audit orders, saying that systemic failures cannot be reduced to technical glitches whereas the Samajwadi Party (SP) accused the government of manipulating elections. The latest move by the UP CEO to call for the audit of Form 6, 7, and 8 is aimed at preventing a repeat of the irregularities reported in Pilibhit and Azamgarh, where EPIC numbers of several voters were found to be linked to other voters and not the original users. Speaking to Times Now Digital on UP CEO audit orders, Congress leader Pooja Tripathi said, "The right to vote is not a bureaucratic favor. It's a constitutional right at the heart of our democracy. You know, Pilibhit is just one example of how electoral rolls are manipulated. And it raises great concerns about the integrity of the electoral process.” "This may have been ordered against some low-lying officers, but accountability cannot begin and end with identifying a few individuals after the damage has been done. We cannot reduce the systemic failure to a few technical glitches. And what has happened is cosmetic changes,” she said. Adding further, the Congress spokesperson said, "Voter records can be altered, and it's just one constituency. Genuine voters can be put at risk of exclusions. There can be multiple entries, and something as tragically funny as you know, Ram ne Ram uh Ram hit Ravan could be translated as something else, Ram ne Ravan ko maara." “The problem is institutional accountability, transparency, and oversight. So nothing less than scrapping the SIR and accountability should be fixed from top to bottom. Some low-lying officers can be scraped, and corrections can be measured. It doesn't happen because Pilibhit is something that has come out. There were multiple constituencies that must be facing the similar issue. And that's why we need safeguards against unauthorized access to voter data. Gyanesh Kumar Gupta must go. The Election Commission needs a structural overhaul. His immunities should be scrapped. And also, the whole SIR process needs a re-look," the Congress leader said. Samajwadi Party leader Vivek Silas, also spoke to Times Now Digital, and said this has totally exposed Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar as a puppet of the Bharatiya Janata Party, Prime Minister Modi, and Home Minister Amit Shah. The Samajwadi Party leader also targeted the poll body for refusing to release the details of its software used in the SIR process, saying, ”You know, the massive misuse of Form 6, 7, and 8 is totally exposed. Now, in an RTI reply, the Election Commissioner or the Election Commission said they cannot even give the information about the software. You know that the software that is responsible for all the misuse, all the discrepancies in the voter list, now that information is being hidden. Why? Because these people are thieves, they are manipulators. They manipulate the elections, or rather I should say, they are the biggest, you know, anti-national the country has ever seen. Because this is treason what Mr. Gupta or the Bharatiya Janata Party have been doing to win elections." Shashwat Bhandari is the Associate Editor at Times Now. With 14 years of experience in the news and media industry, he understands the responsibility ... View More