New Delhi, Oct 20 The Congress on Tuesday alleged that it is now well-established how Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar put in place the ECINET portal to centralise all “manipulations” of the poll process, and demanded a complete revamp of the Election Commission and its IT division.
The opposition party claimed that the list of legal and constitutional violations is growing and Kumar must resign.
Congress general secretary in-charge communications Jairam Ramesh shared on X a screenshot of a media report which claimed that the ECINET portal carries a feature that can bar Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) and Assistant EROs (AEROs) only in West Bengal from reviewing voters’ enumeration forms and viewing the notice-and-hearing dashboard. The report cited a third-party audit of the portal’s publicly served code.
In his post, Ramesh said, “It is by now well-established how Gyanesh Kumar, at the instance and instructions of the PM (Narendra Modi) and the HM (Amit Shah), put in place ECINET to centralise all manipulations of the election process.”
A leading national daily reports that the ECINET code has specific restrictions on access to two key features for EROs and Assistant EROs in West Bengal, he said, adding that these features relate to voter registration and roll revision.
“The law establishes that EROs have statutory authority over the electoral roll. But across the country, the ECINET system and the Election Commission’s IT division have overruled and violated these safeguards,” the Congress leader alleged.
These issues around the operation of the IT division were escalated to the Cabinet Secretary by the two objecting Election Commissioners and even reached the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) under the prime minister, but to no avail, Ramesh said.
“We all know why,” he added.
“The list of legal and Constitutional violations is growing. Gyanesh Kumar must resign. The ECI and its IT division must be completely revamped,” Ramesh said.
Ramesh’s remarks come amid a raging row after The Indian Express reported that election commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi objected on record at least 14 times over the past 10 months to decisions and orders mostly related to the process of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls.
The EC has said that differing views and observations are a part of deliberations in any institution and all its orders carry full legal sanction and follow established statutory procedures.
(PTI News)
