NEW DELHI: Congress leader Jairam Ramesh and Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra backed Supreme Court judge Ujjal Bhuyan after his remarks on voting rights and the disenfranchisement of citizens at an event in Hyderabad.Sharing a video of Bhuyan’s speech in an X post, Ramesh targeted chief election commissioner Gyanesh Kumar and said that Bhuyan had “exposed the CEC lock, stock and barrel”.He also called on Kumar to quit, alleging that his ability to execute what he described as “G2’s illegal orders” had made him “a liability for the country”.TMC MP Mahua Moitra also praised the judge, saying it was rare for a sitting judge to “speak truth to power”. “Kudos to Justice Bhuyan,” she said.‘No amount of whataboutery can justify’Speaking at NALSAR University of Law on Sunday, Bhuyan said the right to vote is integral to the basic structure of the Constitution. He said any process that results in the disenfranchisement of millions of Indian citizens, making them “second-class citizens in their own country” without voting rights, would be intrinsically arbitrary.
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“No amount of whataboutery can justify it. It strikes at the very heart of the Constitution,” he said.Bhuyan further said the Constitution does not provide for two classes of citizens, those with voting rights and those without them — and that wholesale disenfranchisement would violate Articles 14 and 326. He also said the right to vote or be included in the voters’ list cannot be detached from a citizen’s status, comparing it to “taking out the soul from the body”.His remarks came amid the ongoing political and legal controversy over the Election Commission’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls.
