Opposition leaders slam EC over SIR hearing notice to Amartya Sen

New Delhi, Jan 7 (PTI) Several opposition leaders on Wednesday slammed the central poll panel over an SIR notice sent for a hearing to economist Amartya Sen.

CPI(M) General Secretary MA Baby accused the Election Commission of India of "displaying absurd bureaucratism" and demanded a stop to the Special Intensive Revision of voter lists across states.

"India should be proud to have someone like Amartya Sen as its voter. Yet, the Election Commission is being petty, displaying absurd bureaucratism. Once again, the criticism that ECI isn't behaving as expected by a constitutional body of such high stature is being proven right," Baby said in a post on X.

"We reiterate our demand to stop this flawed SIR process, which is disenfranchising a large number of people," he said.

"It is known to all that decades ago, the age of marriage was quite low in our country. For instance, I have been told that my mother got married when she was only 13 years old. We all would be familiar with many such cases in our families in the olden days," he added.

RJD Rajya Sabha MP Manoj Jha, meanwhile, termed the notice "intellectual suicide." "The officials who asked Nobel laureate Amartya Sen for proof of voter status and citizenship made it clear that in this country, it is papers that are respected, not ideas," Jha said in a post on X.

"The Indian who explained moral economy to the world is now being questioned whether he even belongs in India. This is not administrative 'vigilance' but evidence of our intellectual suicide," he said.

"We have not moved forward in history; we have simply walked backwards and reached a point where the establishment is taking us into a blind well," he said in his post in Hindi.

The Election Commission on Wednesday served a notice to Sen, a Nobel laureate, in connection with the ongoing SIR of electoral rolls in West Bengal, seeking a hearing of the 92-year-old on January 16 at his residence over logical discrepancies found in the enumeration form submitted by him, an official said.

Sen's cousin acknowledged the receipt of the notice and said he would inform the academic about the development. PTI AO VN VN