Through SIR, ONOE and Delimitation, BJP Wants to be a Hegemon: Yadav

Through SIR, delimitation and one nation one election (ONOE), BJP wants to be a hegemon, said Yogendra Yadav, president of Swaraj India. After it failed to get a mandate for its desired changes in the architecture of the constitution in 2024, BJP now wants to carry out its agenda from the back door through the three exercises, he stated.

He was delivering a memorial lecture to celebrate the birthday of his JNU days mate P.C. Singh, a journalist, at IIC on Thursday. Yadav said the BJP has taken the 2024 Lok Sabha election as a plebiscite on its intentions to make changes in the constitution. But people rejected it.

On the continuing SIR exercise in Bihar, he said that due to the "Voter Adhikar Yatra’ by the INDIA block in Bihar, the Supreme Court intervention and the election commission bypassing its own rules following the protests against it in general, a very small number of voters would find their names deleted from the voters' list, but the way in which SIR has been framed, it would it lead to poor and uneducated voters losing their voting rights on their failure to submit documents which the commission has declared valid across the count as the exercise is extended to other states.”

For the first time in Indian democracy, the onus for inclusion of names in the voters' list has been put on the voters as against the earlier practice of the state being responsible for it. It would lead to disenfranchisement of the have nots and unlearnt due to their inability to procure documents.

The delimitation will skew the Lok Sabha seats in favour of the Hindi-speaking people, adding regional fault lines to the economic and linguistic ones.

Similarly, ONOE would give dominance to the party in power at the centre as in the simultaneous elections to the Assembly and the Lok Sabha, the narrative of the party ruling the country trumps regional parties' discourses. Attempts by BJP to a hegemon can be countered only by the people, not by the legislatures or the judiciary, he said, concluding with his aphorism that the republic can be saved only by the public.