NEW DELHI: Mumbai Police on Sunday registered an FIR against the organisers of the joint morcha led by Maharashtra Navnirman Sena and Shiv Sena (UBT) for not obtaining mandatory police clearance and violating prohibitory orders.The FIR was registered at the Azad Maidan police station after Uddhav Thackeray and Raj Thackeray led a joint protest march towards the BMC headquarters against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar over the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls.Uddhav said the protest was aimed at opposing what he described as an attack on voters’ rights and democracy. He claimed that the names of “13 crore people” had been deleted from electoral rolls across the country and alleged that voters had also been excluded in West Bengal and Tamil Nadu.“We are standing here today to overthrow the dictator,” he said.“Does the home ministry have the power to cancel a person’s citizenship rights? They are using that power through Gyanesh Kumar, and that is why we do not want Gyanesh Kumar,” he added.
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Meanwhile, Raj Thackeray called for the cancellation of the SIR exercise in Maharashtra.“We demand that the entire SIR conducted in Maharashtra should be cancelled,” he said.“Forty to sixty lakh voters were added during the Assembly elections, and power was captured through this. And now, through SIR, two crore people are being removed. Who are these two crore voters?” he asked.“I appeal to all political parties to go to Delhi and demand that the SIR should be cancelled. Voting machines should be discontinued, and elections should be conducted using ballot papers,” he added.The joint protest came amid an ongoing political controversy over the SIR exercise and the functioning of the Election Commission. Raj and Uddhav Thackeray had announced the October 4 march against the poll panel, inviting other political parties to participate.The Opposition has alleged irregularities in electoral rolls, while the Election Commission has maintained that the revision process is aimed at updating and cleaning electoral rolls and has mechanisms for claims and objections.
