Lucknow, Oct. 11 -- Uttar Pradesh BJP president Pankaj Chaudhary on Saturday defended the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, calling it a routine purification exercise and accused the Opposition of attacking Election Commission to divert attention from development under Prime Minister Narendra Modi. "SIR is intensive checking and purification of the voter list that has happened eight times since independence, the maximum times when Congress PMs were in office. Absent, shifted, dead and duplicate voters (ASDD) are identified and removed. Wrong details of name, address are corrected and eligible left-out citizens and new voters are added," Chaudhary told the media persons on Saturday. "This is not a new strategy. Since the NDA government under PM Modi came to power in 2014, the Opposition has been targeting historic reforms that transformed India. By levelling allegations on Rafale, EVMs and now 'vote chori', the Opposition tries to confuse voters at every step," he said. Citing Congress's declining vote share - from 45% in 1952 to 21.4% in 2024 - Chaudhary said it shows voters have lost faith in the party. "So without any agenda, Congress now wants to break voters' trust from democracy itself," he added. "ECI is the backbone of Indian democracy. In the last 70 years, EC has conducted 400-plus assembly polls and 20 general elections. Managing elections for one-sixth of the world population makes it one of most important guardians of global democracy. With increase in average turnout and number of political parties, electoral democracy has become even stronger in the last 10 years," the state BJP chief said. "Dozens of elected governments were dismissed by Congress for selfish interests," he added....