NEW DELHI: “It is our commitment to you that the people who have done this, Mr. Modi, Mr. Shah, Mr. Gyanesh Kumar, the lady who’s hiding right now in Dehradun, and others are going to be brought to justice,” Rahul Gandhi said announcing a united INDIA bloc’s resolve to continue its agitation against alleged SIR irregularities.A day after the INDIA bloc’s high-voltage protest march against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar over alleged electoral irregularities, leader of opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi hosted a high tea for opposition leaders at his residence. Following the meeting, INDIA bloc leaders addressed a press conference.“Yesterday, you saw an expression not of the political party standing here, but an expression of the people of India…We would like to thank the people of Delhi, the people of India, who stood with us against what is being done. This is not about us. This is about the people of India,” Rahul said.But then who was the ‘lady hiding right now in Dehradun’ whom the leader of opposition in Lok Sabha was referring to in his statement?Rahul Gandhi and other opposition leaders have been relentless in their attacks on the Prime Minister and the Union home minister, but it was his reference to a ‘lady hiding in Dehradun’ that added an element of mystery to the press conference.Was the Congress leader referring to Seema Khanna, the Election Commission’s Director General (IT), whose name has figured in opposition allegations of ‘vote theft’?There is no confirmation that Khanna is the woman Rahul was referring to. The Congress leader did not identify her, and there is no independently verified information linking her to Dehradun. However, her name has repeatedly surfaced in allegations raised by opposition leaders against CEC Gyanesh Kumar.
Why is Seema Khanna’s name in the controversy?
Khanna’s name came into focus following a report by The Indian Express, which said Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had raised objections at least 14 times over 10 months to decisions related to the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls.Among the concerns raised was the growing centralisation of control over electoral-roll software and restrictions on the powers of Electoral Registration Officers (EROs), who are legally responsible for maintaining voter lists.The controversy centred on the Election Commission’s digital systems, including ERONet and ECINet, which are used to manage electoral rolls and election-related services. ECINet is a unified digital platform developed by the Election Commission to streamline electoral processes and improve transparency and accessibility.The investigation raised questions about whether local election officials had adequate access to make corrections, restore voters’ names and exercise their statutory powers, or whether some of these functions had become concentrated within the Commission’s IT department headed by Khanna.Last month, Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra filed a police complaint against CEC Gyanesh Kumar at Delhi’s Parliament Street Police Station, alleging procedural violations, unilateral decision-making and manipulation of electoral rolls.Speaking to ANI, Moitra directly named Khanna while accusing the Election Commission of manipulating voter lists through its software.“Very important things like the crores of new voters were not being allowed to come on the list because of the addition of a new question on Form 6, the new voters list. And we now find that the two other election commissioners had said this is completely illegal; still, the question linking parentage was put in,” Mahua Moitra had said.“We find how the EROs and the BLOs and the ground-level officials were not kept in the loop and denied access to the software, and Seema Khanna, who was DGIT, along with Gyanesh Kumar, played with the software from the back end to manipulate voter lists while keeping EROs and block-level officials in the dark. This is a very serious charge,” she alleged.She also questioned changes to Form 6, used for registering new voters, and alleged that 33 lakh valid voters in West Bengal had been kept off the electoral rolls through questionable appeals.Moitra argued that decisions taken without the consent of the other two Election Commissioners could not be treated as decisions of the full Commission. These allegations have not been established.
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The Election Commission, however, has maintained that differing views among its commissioners are part of the decision-making process and that its decisions were unanimous. It has also described ECINet as a unified platform intended to improve electoral services.While Khanna’s name has repeatedly figured in the wider controversy, there is still no confirmation that she was the woman Rahul Gandhi referred to during Tuesday’s press conference.
