Election Commission adds 6.5 lakh 'migrants' in Tamil Nadu as voters after removing 65 lakh from Bihar. P Chidambaram accuses 'abuse' of power
&imwidth=600&imheight=450&format=webp&quality=medium "Election Commission adds 6.5 lakh 'migrants' in Tamil Nadu as voters after removing 65 lakh from Bihar. P Chidambaram accuses 'abuse' of power")
File photo Photograph: (PTI)
Former finance minister and Congress leader P Chidambaram accused that the Election Commission added 6.5 lakh 'migrants' in Tamil Nadu as voters after removing 65 lakh from Bihar. He called it abuse of power in the country.
Former finance minister and Congress leader P Chidambaram, amid the chaos around the special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Bihar, has raised an alarming issue as he alleged that 6.5 lakh "migrant workers" were added as voters in Tamil Nadu just after the poll body removed 65 lakh of people from the voters' list of Bihar ahead of the assembly polls. The minister called the situation "alarming" and "illegal". He accused the poll body of trying to change the "electoral character" of states. The Rajya Sabha MP also said that the SIR exercise in Bihar was getting "curioser" by the day. The minister linked the situation in Bihar with that in Tamil Nadu, which will go to the polls next year after Bihar.
"While 65 lakh voters are in danger of being disenfranchised in Bihar, the report of adding 6.5 lakh persons as voters in Tamil Nadu is alarming and patently illegal," the former Home Minister said on the social media platform X.
"Calling them 'permanently migrated' is an insult to the migrant workers and a gross interference in the right of the electorate of Tamil Nadu to elect a government of its choice," he added in the post.
Chidambaram raises questions
The Congress leader asked the reason behind the addition of migrants in the voters' list of Tamil Nadu. He asked why a migrant should not return to his hometown to vote there.
"A person to be enrolled as a voter must have a fixed and permanent legal home. The migrant worker has such a home in Bihar (or another state). How can he/she be enrolled as a voter in Tamil Nadu?" Chidambaram wrote. The minister accused the Election Commission of "abusing" its power.
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"If the migrant worker's family has a permanent home in Bihar and lives in Bihar, how can the migrant worker be considered as 'permanently migrated' to Tamil Nadu?" Chidambaram wrote.
