Jairam Ramesh 'misses' EC meet after 2-person cap alters Congress plan
NEW DELHI: Though
Election Commission
had specifically invited only party heads, along with another person authorised by the party head, for Wednesday's multi-party meeting sought by an AICC counsel to discuss the special intensive revision (SIR) of Bihar's electoral roll, just four of the 11 parties sent prior confirmation of their participation and only two had their party heads in attendance.
No confirmation email for the July 2 meeting - offered by the poll panel in response to the June 30 letter from AICC counsel Omar Hoda seeking an "urgent meeting" on behalf of 10 parties - was received from the remaining seven parties, including Congress, DMK, TMC, Samajwadi Party, NCP-SP and JMM. Shiv Sena (UBT) was part of the 11-party INDIA delegation but was not mentioned in the AICC e-mail to EC.
Congress, which later expressed unhappiness with EC's two-person invite limit, arrived at Nirvachan Sadan on Wednesday with a team of 6-7 members.
However, it eventually honoured EC's call to restrict the nominees to two persons, choosing Abhishek Singhvi and Bihar PCC chief Rajesh Kumar to represent the party in the discussion. Other Congress members like Jairam Ramesh and Pawan Khera had to sit out. EC sources said the decision to keep them out and send Singhvi and Kumar instead was "entirely between members of the Congress delegation", since the party president had not nominated anybody.
"
Out of a total of 14 persons who attended the meeting, there were heads of two parties - CPI and CPI(ML) Liberation - and five others authorised to attend by their respective party heads, which included two each from RJD and CPM and one from CPI (ML) Liberation. The remaining seven participants had no authorisation from the heads of their political parties, including the Congress president," said an EC functionary.
"Some of the participants were given an appointment by EC, and others were allowed to join in without any prior appointment. Still the Commission decided to meet two representatives from every party to hear their views," an EC officer told TOI.
During the meeting, the parties were briefed by EC on the SIR guidelines, which the latter said were strictly in conformity with Article 326 of the Constitution and provisions of R P Act, 1950. The parties were urged to appoint more BLAs, already numbering around 1.5 lakh, and work closely with block level officers during the roll revision.
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