Reacting to this, Congress leader Udit Raj said that the Opposition is not against the SIR process but the vote theft being committed in Bihar through the SIR.

Speaking to IANS, Udit Raj said, “There are no elections there right now. If they do it there, it’s fine. But here, we are saying the timing was not right. How is it possible to verify 8 crore voters in just one month? We are not against SIR; it can be conducted, but can the government manage it when it has not even been able to conduct the Census? It is a useless government.”

He also claimed that the SIR in Odisha is being done to justify the vote theft in Bihar and other states.

“There are no elections in Odisha. There is a BJP government in the state. I don’t know why they are conducting the SIR there. I think it is to justify whatever wrongdoings they (the ECI and government) are doing in Bihar and other states. They are trying to justify the ‘vote chori'”, the Congress leader added.

Shiv Sena (UBT) MP Priyanka Chaturvedi also stressed the importance of a fair SIR process.

“The SIR that has started in Bihar, the way people’s names are being removed, the way the entire constitutional mandate is being undermined and how the Election Commissioner is speaking, it is becoming very clear that the SIR is not truly meant to provide clean records or clean voter rolls but to run an agenda,” Chaturvedi told IANS.

“No matter where it starts, be it in Odisha, we hope that it is carried out through a non-political, unbiased and democratic process and not to disenfranchise the people who have no one to support them,” she added.