Mumbai: The scrapping of special intensive revisions (SIRs) of electoral rolls, a return to paper ballots, and elections for the post of the chief election commissioner (CEC) formed the core demands at the joint ‘Garjana’ protest rally organised by Shiv Sena (UBT) president Uddhav Thackeray and MNS chief Raj Thackeray on Sunday.Uddhav accused Kumar of acting as a “weapon” for BJP. He warned “BJP and these officials” of prosecution on the lines of the Nuremberg trials conducted for leaders of Nazi Germany. “[They] should realise that a similar thing will happen in the country.”Addressing a crowd of 8,000-10,000 that stretched from the Metro Cinema junction to the BMC headquarters in south Mumbai, the cousins called for structural changes to the electoral process. The demonstration was organised without any party flags; only the tricolour was allowed. Many netas from other MVA parties participated as well. Azad Maidan police later registered a case against the organisers for holding the rally without permission. The protest came two days after CJP’s stir in the city seeking CEC Gyanesh Kumar’s ouster.Uddhav sought data on the number of illegal Bangladeshis detected since SIRs began. “If SIRs were conducted to weed out Bangladeshis from the voters’ list, then how many of them residing illegally in the country did govt find?” He asked how so many illegal Bangladeshis as alleged reached Maharashtra in the first place when the border is controlled by the Centre.He alleged that 13 crore voters stand deleted nationwide from draft electoral rolls—“roughly equivalent to the entire population of Maharashtra”. Citing the case of West Bengal, where some deleted voters were restored to the rolls, Uddhav noted that re-checking all voters who have been left out nationwide would take “approximately 144 months”.Raj questioned the addition of nearly 1 crore votes for BJP in Maharashtra in the six months between the Lok Sabha elections and the assembly polls in 2024. “In those six months, 40-60 lakh votes were added to the rolls. BJP got 2.4 crore votes in the Lok Sabha elections and 3.1 crore in the assembly elections,” he said. He said fear of loss of people’s faith in them—thereby resulting in loss of votes—usually deters those in govt from engaging in such poll roll manipulations. “But this fear is non-existent in the state and Union govts,” he said.State NCP (SP) president Shashikanth Shinde asked what poll officials and state govt plan to do about the “2 crore voters declared bogus” who cast their votes in the assembly elections.Congress’s Balasaheb Thorat asserted that MVA’s loss in Maharashtra “was made possible only through the stealing of votes”. He said Rahul Gandhi, the leader of the opposition in the Lok Sabha, has been flagging “vote theft” for a long time and had also presented evidence of it. “All those who gained power did so through the theft of votes. They used various methods. Gyanesh Kumar is a symbol of this corrupt administration,” he alleged. “The period since 2014 (of NDA’s governance) will be remembered as a ‘dark period’ in the country’s history.”Demanding reforms in the process of appointment of the poll chief, Uddhav questioned why the post is not subject to a vote. “If we can have elections for the President, why can’t we have an election for the CEC who is responsible for conducting elections across the entire country?” Uddhav also criticised changes to the CEC selection panel. “The selection committee earlier used to comprise the PM, the CJI and the leader of the opposition, but now, they have replaced the CJI with a minister of govt’s choice.” He questioned the legal protection granted to the CEC. “By law, the CEC cannot be hauled up and prosecuted for his time as the commissioner. Why does the CEC have such protection that even the PM doesn’t have?”Uddhav also spoke about the drought conditions in the state. “Today, Maharashtra is facing a famine. We can’t even imagine the condition of the famine-plagued farmer today.” Citing the case of one such farmer, Jijabai Kachate, he said she planted soybean in her field in Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, which failed. “She then planted chillies, which too failed. Later, she planted corn, which also failed. The loans piled up. The banks came calling. And then her son died by suicide in the same field. The same field where she saw her future, she saw her son’s final rites,” he said.While Raj’s son, Amit, attended the rally, Uddhav’s son, Aaditya, was unwell and could not attend it, said Shiv Sena (UBT) functionaries. Police invoked Sections 223 (disobedience to order duly promulgated by a public servant), 189 (unlawful assembly) and 190 (every member of unlawful assembly guilty of offence committed in prosecution of common object) of BNS in the case filed against the protest’s organisers.
