The BJP on Sunday fielded its prominent chief ministers against Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi and the INDIA bloc to counter “baseless allegations” questioning the impartiality of the Election Commission of India (ECI) and expose their “conspiracy to malign the country’s constitutional institutions”.This comes a day after the ECI’s statement on Saturday following The Indian Express investigation on notes of dissent by the two Election Commissioners, Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi, over SIR-related decisions taken by the poll panel. The reports triggered a political firestorm, with the Opposition parties attacking the Chief Election Commissioner, Gyanesh Kumar, and demanding his arrest and criminal prosecution.The BJP said that despite the ECI’s “point-by-point and fact-based clarification on all the fabricated allegations levelled by the Opposition”, the Congress and its allies, “frustrated by their repeated electoral defeats, remain determined to undermine constitutional propriety in an attempt to conceal their failures”.The ruling party said that over one crore duplicate entries and 2.8 crore names of deceased voters were removed from electoral rolls across states and UTs under the SIR exercise, and “those who benefited from dirty rolls are now crying foul”.“Who benefited from keeping these duplicate names on the rolls? If there was nothing to hide, why the panic over cleaning up voter lists?” the BJP said in a post on its X handle.West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari said the Congress supports SIR in Kerala because it won there, but is opposing it in Bengal after losing the election. He blamed former CM Mamata Banerjee for the deletion of 27 lakh names in Bengal and asserted that neither the BJP nor the poll panel could be held responsible for the exclusions. “If SIR is good in Kerala, why is it bad in West Bengal? We have won 208 seats, while the two sides (TMC and its allies) have 80. Mamata Banerjee is unable to accept the people’s verdict,” he said at a press conference.Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath accused the Congress and its allies of weakening democratic institutions for political interests and said they should apologise to the nation for their criticism of the ECI and the SIR. Addressing reporters at his residence in Lucknow, Adityanath said, “The kind of uproar that the Congress, Samajwadi Party, RJD and other parties have created over the SIR this time is extremely unfortunate.” “If elections are won, it is their achievement. If people reject them because of their corruption, economic misconduct, wrong policies and anarchic actions, then how justified is it to blame the Election Commission or EVMs? These parties should introspect,” he said.Story continues below this adBihar Chief Minister Samrat Choudhary said the Opposition was raising a “false alarm” over SIR. “No one questioned the deletion of seven lakh voters during the SIR (in Bihar), and all objections raised by Congress and other political parties were addressed,” he said. “The problem with Rahul Gandhi and Tejashwi Yadav is that they rarely present facts. They travel around Bihar like tourists,” he told reporters.Launching a sharp attack on Gandhi, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said: “No votes have been stolen; Rahul Gandhi’s mind has been stolen.” He said the LoP wants to “malign institutions under the guise of defending the Constitution and create anarchy in the country so that people lose faith in the system and the country can be pushed towards communist ideology”.Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma described the INDIA bloc as an “alliance of defeated people”.Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami accused the Congress of habitually fabricating a “narrative” to create confusion, only to be “exposed soon after”. He said while it is legitimate to raise questions in a democracy, it is “wrong to malign institutions by presenting a note of an internal discussion as a final decision; all decisions of the Election Commission have been taken with complete consensus”.Story continues below this adMadhya Pradesh Chief Minister Mohan Yadav, while attacking Gandhi and the Congress, said the LoP is “unable to manage his own party and family, and therefore, he has now resorted to spreading lies and confusion”.Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Vishnu Deo Sai said the Congress, frustrated after losing more than 100 elections, has now resorted to “anti-national conduct”. He stated that the joint press statement by the Election Commissioners has “exposed the Congress’s lies and that this is a calculated conspiracy by Rahul Gandhi to tarnish the image of the country”.Rajasthan Chief Minister Bhajan Lal Sharma said the Opposition was “spreading lies to conceal its electoral defeats”. “Make allegations, but also provide the facts and basis for them,” he said.Questioning the Opposition’s real intent, Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta sought to assert that the Opposition was creating “this baseless controversy to divert attention from its failures, its betrayal of the country and the development works being undertaken”.Story continues below this adHaryana Chief Minister Nayab Singh Saini said the Congress is “frustrated due to the wrong policies pursued during its tenure”, adding that during its rule, youths, farmers, poor and women were insulted, which led the people to reject them. He said the Opposition now has only one mission left: “Abuse Prime Minister Narendra Modi ji or insult constitutional institutions.”Gujarat CM Bhupendra Patel accused the Congress of having “double standards”. “Whenever they win elections, they talk about the victory of democracy and neutrality of the EC, but when the mandate goes to the BJP, they start singing false tunes of vote chori and irregularities.”(Inputs from Kolkata, Lucknow, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Patna, Bhopal, Raipur, Chandigarh)