Panaji: Congress workers on Friday staged a protest outside the office of the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO), Goa, demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar over the alleged large-scale deletion of voters’ names during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls.A delegation later submitted a memorandum addressed to President of India and the CEO, Goa, seeking immediate restoration of all names deleted through the SIR process.Leader of opposition Yuri Alemao termed the mass deletion of names “a murder of democracy” and accused Kumar of committing “a fraud on the people of the country”.The protest forms part of Congress’s wider campaign against the SIR process. The party has alleged that the exercise was manipulated to favour BJP.Congress functionary Savio Coutinho cited alleged irregularities in the process, including enumeration forms being distributed in bulk to BJP leaders instead of booth-level officers. He also alleged that BJP BLA-2s filed objections far in excess of the prescribed daily limit of 10 and that some voters were listed for deletion despite not having sought removal of their names.Coutinho claimed that 1.4 lakh voters were deleted statewide. Even after excluding genuine cases, he said, the remaining deletions averaged around 1,750 per constituency—significant in view of the narrow margins by which several assembly seats have been won, including margins of less than 1,500 votes.Amit Palekar claimed that nearly 18% of the votes deleted in the Santa Cruz constituency belonged mostly to minority voters.Congress president Girish Chodankar said the party was exploring legal remedies against what it described as “vote chori”.
