New Delhi: The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) joined the Congress’s chorus against the Election Commission (EC) Friday by alleging that the poll body was part of the BJP’s “plot” to strike off names of thousands of voters from Delhi’s electoral roll ahead of the Assembly elections early next year.
The AAP said the BJP was doing so by filing “false applications” with the election watchdog.
In a sharp retort, the BJP said the AAP’s allegations stemmed from its fear of losing the polls as only names of “illegal Rohingya and Bangladeshi infiltrators” were being deleted from the voters’ list.
During a press conference at the party’s headquarters in Delhi Friday, AAP national convener Arvind Kejriwal, however, paraded several individuals whose names he said were deleted from the list.
“Now we know how they are forming governments. We have seen the allegations made by the Congress, and the Shiv Sena (UBT). We don’t know what happened in Haryana and Maharashtra… but this exposé on Delhi only deepens the suspicion that something must have happened,” Kejriwal said, accusing the EC of working at the BJP’s behest in “disenfranchising people”.
The BJP recently returned to power in the Haryana and Maharashtra assemblies with decisive victories over the opposition Congress.
‘BJP wants to shrink Shahdara roll by 6%’
Kejriwal said in the Shahdara assembly constituency alone, the BJP had filed applications to delete 11,018 names, claiming they had either moved or died.
The AAP chief further said the EC, which is supposed to make public all such requests for deletion, had done so only for 487 applications in this seat.
Kejriwal said on examining 500 random names from these 11,018, the party found that as many as 372 were still residents of Shahdara. “And most of them are AAP supporters. The BJP effectively wants names of 6 percent voters of Shahdara constituency to be deleted from the rolls. One must remember that the AAP won Shahdara by a margin of 5,294 votes in 2020,” he said.
The office of the Shahdara District Magistrate called Kejriwal’s claim “factually incorrect” as only 494 applications had been received since 29 October, when the special summary revision exercise by the Delhi Chief Electoral Officer’s office ended.
Apart from the inclusion of new names, the pre-poll revision exercise also allows for objections to be filed against ineligible voters. Under EC norms, any voter of a concerned constituency can object.
AAP brings ‘proof’
Delhi’s ruling party bandied an application by one Vishal Bhardwaj—submitted to the EC on a BJP letterhead—demanding the deletion of names from Shahdara. When contacted via calls, the person who answered said Bhardwaj was busy and would get back.
In the letter to the poll body, Bhardwaj apparently claimed that voters named by him were either dead or not residents of the area. “It is possible that the voters who don’t live here got their names enlisted using the addresses of their relatives and visit the area only during polls. It is also possible they cast their votes in other states, too,” Bhardwaj wrote in the purported letter dated 28 November.
Kejriwal further said the EC’s role here was under a cloud because it had not made public all such applications. “This means the EC is surreptitiously working on them. The EC also passed an order on 22 November directing its officials to work on the applications,” Kejriwal said, demanding a moratorium on the deletion of names after 18 October.
EC ‘action’ on Bhardwaj letter
In its 22 November order, the Office of the Assistant Electoral Registration Officer—attaching the submissions made by Bhardwaj—directed booth-level officers to “take necessary action and submit reports” to local police stations about each of the voters on the Shahdara list.
“In view of the upcoming assembly elections, it has come to the notice that there are a certain number of voters who have either shifted or deceased,” stated the order, copies of which were shared with representatives of the AAP and the Congress.
Talking to the media Friday, Kejriwal said similar applications have been submitted in other constituencies as well—6,020 in Janakpuri, 5,862 in Sangam Vihar, 4,285 in R.K. Puram, 4,061 in Palam, 4,013 in Dwarka, 3,987 in Tughlakabad, 3,933 in Okhla, 2,957 in Karawal Nagar, 2,147 in Laxmi Nagar, 2,051 in Mustafabad, 1,923 in Vikaspuri, 1,807 in Uttam Nagar, 1,631 in Krishna Nagar, and 1,561 in Matiala.
“Who is making these applications one-and-a-half months before the elections?” the former Delhi chief minister asked.
(Edited by Tikli Basu)
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