‘Any dissent termed anti-national’: Ex-bureaucrats urge civil servants to uphold Constitution values
The retired officers urged serving officials to follow the law even when doing so causes ‘personal inconvenience’.
Black News 
A group of former bureaucrats on Wednesday raised concerns about dissent and differences of opinion with the government increasingly being described as “anti-national” and called on civil servants to uphold the Constitution and follow due process of law.
The Constitutional Conduct Group said it felt compelled to write the open letter “at a juncture in our country’s history when constitutional values are being openly breached, and when democratic dialogue and discussion are virtually absent, with any expression of dissent or difference of opinion being termed ‘anti-national’”.
The group urged serving bureaucrats to uphold their “primary allegiance” to the Constitution and follow the law even when doing so causes “personal inconvenience”.
They described the Election Commission’s handling of the special intensive revision of voter rolls as the “most glaring example of wilful disregard of constitutional ethics”.
The group that said the voter roll revision had “no precedent, no clear basis in law, and no verified necessity”, and had shifted the burden onto citizens to prove their eligibility with documents many may not possess.
It also criticised the use of lineage to establish voting rights, saying that the “purification” of electoral rolls had created “panic and fear”.
More than 13 crore names have been removed from voter lists and draft rolls since the first phase of the exercise...
