A day after on the unprecedented rupture within the Election Commission and the disenfranchisement of potential voters in Goa, the state’s Opposition parties on Thursday accused the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar and the ruling BJP government of trying to “influence” and “sabotage” the upcoming state assembly polls in the coastal state.

on Thursday reported that between February 11 and 17, the office of Goa’s Chief Electoral Officer wrote eight times to Gyanesh Bharti, the Senior Deputy Election Commissioner in charge of the state, copying Director General of IT Seema Khanna every time, asking for the rollback option that would let the EROs reverse the earlier deletions as the Supreme Court had directed. The requests went unanswered as the deadline for publication of the final electoral roll approached. The provision was not enabled in time. The 97 were left off the final voters’ roll in Goa.

The Opposition parties in Goa on Thursday demanded that 97 voters found eligible for the final roll be added to the electoral roll immediately.

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Goa Forward Party chief Vijai Sardesai said, “I fear the 2027 Goa Assembly Elections may be about ‘vote chori’.”

“In my own constituency of Fatorda, 4,500 voters have been disenfranchised… some may have died. But in Goa, 10.76 per cent of voters (1.27 lakh voters) have been deleted post SIR,” he said. “The voter deletion has to be rolled back, with the exception of those who have died. It has been exposed that Goan officials, EROs, AEROs… couldn’t do anything to give justice to the voters who were disenfranchised. It is very clear that the fundamental rights given to an Indian citizen and the fairness of the electoral system because of decentralisation of the electoral model in India are being dismantled. Hence, the entire electoral system is itself in doubt. By and large, the rights of Goan voters are being decided by people sitting on a software in Delhi, which means the Goa election will be stolen.”

Addressing a press conference in Panaji, Sunil Kawthankar, Goa Pradesh Congress Committee working president, said the BJP was trying to win elections through SIR because it knows it would be tough to return to power in Goa. “Deletion of names of valid voters amounts to sabotage. The Election Commission has become an arm of the BJP, and they are using it to win the polls,” he said.

Aam Aadmi Party Goa President Valmiki Naik slammed CEC Gyanesh Kumar and said centralising the process in Delhi undermined the authority of EROs to re-add voters. Naik said this is probably “just the tip of the iceberg”. “Those who don’t vote for the BJP will have their votes deleted,” Naik claimed.