Kolkata (West Bengal) [India], June 30 : Congress leader KC Venugopal on Tuesday said that senior journalist R Rajagopal "has been subjected to a terrible ordeal due to the blatantly unconstitutional SIR process" and it "has led to a denial of his passport renewal".
Venugopal, who met Rajagopal in Kolkata, alleged that he has been denied passport due to "vendetta politics" and that the senior journalist "is being targeted because he is a true journalist who writes without fear".
The Congress leader said in a post on X that Rajapopal is an honest Indian citizen, and denying him his passport renewal is against the Constitution of India.
He said Rajagopal's name has been in the electoral rolls of Kolkata since 2010, but since 2002 was taken as the base year and an inconsequential error in his 10th marksheet, his name was excluded in this SIR.
"While the appeal to his exclusion is pending, the passport authorities have rejected his passport renewal - despite him holding a passport since 2005, renewing it in 2015. The police called him to the police station and demanded seeing his voter ID card, and then withheld his passport renewal without conducting any home visit," said Venugopal, who is Congress General Secretary (Organisation).
The Congress leader said that BJP-supported candidates like Parimal Nathwani "get away with glaring errors in their election affidavits, but ordinary citizens like Mr. Rajagopal are punished for minor errors in their 10th marksheets".
"This is pure vendetta politics, and he is being targeted because he is a true journalist who writes without fear. They are setting a dangerous precedent - where first they exclude you from the electoral rolls using SIR, and then snatch away your citizenship by denying you important documents one by one," he said.
Venugopal said the poor PDS beneficiaries are also being meted out "with similar injustice - where deletion from electoral rolls is leading to denial of ration benefits" by the West Bengal State Government.
Keralam Chief Minister VD Satheesan had earlier written to West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari, seeking urgent intervention in the "passport renewal denial" to R Rajagopal, former Editor of The Telegraph.
Satheesan said in a post on X that he had written to Suvendu Adhikari.