‘AIADMK wholeheartedly welcomes SIR in Tamil Nadu’

The AIADMK said on Monday that it “wholeheartedly” welcomed the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Tamil Nadu.

In a statement, D. Jayakumar, organisation secretary of the party and former Minister, wanted the Election Commission (EC) to see to it that the process was conducted properly and in a transparent manner. “As the exercise will be done by employees of the State government, the Commission should ensure that they carry out the work impartially,” he said.

He recalled how his party had complained about the presence of 40,000 names, including about 8,000 deceased, in the electoral rolls released at the time of the byelection to the Erode (East) assembly constituency in 2023, despite the persons not residing in the area and, during the Lok Sabha poll last year, “non-deletion” of names of the dead and those who had out-migrated from the State, in addition to duplicate entries.

In the R.K. Nagar assembly seat, out of 44,000 names to be deleted, as sought by the AIADMK before the Madras High Court, about 31,000 names had been deleted till now. Inquiry was in progress with regard to the rest. This was also being carried out in other Chennai constituencies — Tiruvellikeni-Chepauk, T. Nagar, and Thousand Lights.

As Chief Minister M.K. Stalin knew that the defeat of his party in the 2026 Assembly election was imminent, he has begun searching for reasons for the eventual outcome, Mr. Jayakumar alleged. At least in the remaining months, he should stop blaming the Opposition and do good deeds for people of the State, Mr Jayakumar added.