All India Congress Committee (AICC) General Secretary Sachin Pilot addressing a press conference on Special Intensive Review (SIR) in Bastar, Chhattisgarh, Thursday, November 27, 2025. | Photo credit: PTI
Senior Congress leader Sachin Pilot on Thursday said the Bharatiya Janata Party is deceiving people in the name of illegal immigrants casting their votes and using it as a pretext to disenfranchise genuine voters from disadvantaged sections.
At a press conference in Chhattisgarh’s Jagdalpur, the All India Congress Committee in charge of Chhattisgarh claimed that the party did not want any illegal immigrant to vote, but questioned the role of the Election Commission of India in conducting the ongoing Special Intensive Review or SIR of electoral rolls and the overall fairness of the electoral process in the country. The SIR is currently underway in Chhattisgarh and Mr. Pilot and senior state officials were on a two-day visit to the Bastar region to create awareness among voters.
“We don’t want any infiltrators to enter India illegally. But I want to ask, how many illegal immigrants has this BJP government in Delhi kicked out of our country in the last 11 years? Please share these numbers. Whenever elections come, infiltrators will come to Bihar, Maharashtra and Haryana. When next elections come, they will go to your questions, how many times were heard between deeds and deeds.” No clear data was provided to Parliament. If there is a Dalit, backward, helpless, poor or uneducated person in any corner of this country or Chhattisgarh? he said.
He said people from these sections were struggling to make ends meet and had no time, no resources to collect documents and argue with “officials about whether their names are included” in the lists, adding that the Congress party was in place today to protect them.
Mr. Pilot raised questions about the SIR process and cited the example of a three-time MLA from Chhattisgarh whose name was missing from the voter list of his native village and earlier incidents in Bihar. Mr. Pilot sought to find out why the Election Commission did not act on documents and data related to alleged voter roll fraud submitted by Congress.
“The question arises how thousands of names were removed from the voter list in Bihar? Rahul Gandhi held a press conference that showed evidence of vote theft and deletion of names. Unfortunately, the EC did not even consider ordering an inquiry,” he said.
Published – 27 Nov 2025 20:41 IST
