Ranchi, September 08, 2026: Jharkhand Pradesh Congress Committee media in-charge Rakesh Sinha has accused the BJP of politicising the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls and attempting to link voter verification with religion.
Reacting to recent BJP statements on SIR, Sinha alleged that the opposition party was questioning the intentions of election officials while making claims about alleged infiltrators without publicly producing evidence.
He said any genuine objection regarding a person’s citizenship or inclusion in the electoral roll should be dealt with through the procedure prescribed under law.
“If the BJP has evidence, it should place it before the Election Commission,” Sinha said, arguing that allegations made at press conferences cannot determine how the electoral process is conducted.
Sinha also rejected the BJP’s alleged claim that a Returning Officer had already decided not to accept Form 7 applications. He said that if the party had evidence supporting the allegation, it should approach the Election Commission with the documents.
The Congress leader further criticised what he described as attempts to raise questions about entire communities by referring to places such as Sahibganj, Pakur and Dumka. He alleged that isolated or disputed cases were being used to cast suspicion on a large number of citizens.
Sinha also targeted the BJP over its references to alleged infiltration, saying the party should publicly provide the names, addresses, evidence and details of action in individual cases if it had concrete information.
He accused the BJP of shifting the political discussion away from issues such as inflation, unemployment, farmers and jobs towards what he described as fear-based electoral narratives involving religion, infiltration and SIR.
On the role of election officials, Sinha said the Election Commission is a constitutional institution and should not be treated as an extension of any political party. He alleged that questioning officials’ intentions and putting the entire revision process under suspicion reflected political pressure.
Sinha challenged the BJP to make any concrete evidence public and stop, as he alleged, using religion to create apprehension around the electoral process.
The statements are part of an ongoing political dispute over SIR and voter-list verification in Jharkhand. The allegations made by Sinha represent the Congress position; no BJP response to these specific remarks is included in the source material.
