Delhi: Delhi’s ruling AAP on Monday, November 19, moved the Election Commission protesting “fraudulent” deletion of voter names, alleging that some of its officers used “an inaccurate list of deleted voters” for inspection.
Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP) national spokesperson Raghav Chadha, in a letter to the Chief Election Commissioner O.P. Rawat, alleged that the officers conducting the survey “prepared an incomplete, inaccurate, inauthentic and non-comprehensive list of deleted voters”.
“The list which formed the basis of the survey was at complete variance with the one on the (Election Commission) website,” Chadha said, adding that several people claimed that their names were deleted, but neither the Commission’s website nor the officers carrying the inspection had those people’s names in the deleted voter list.
This is the second time the AAP is reaching out to Rawat on the alleged wrongful deletion of voter names from the electoral list.
Earlier, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal had approached the poll panel after AAP’s South Delhi Lok Sabha in-charge Raghav Chadha claimed that about one lakh voters’ names have been dropped from the South Delhi parliamentary constituency alone at the behest of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
The EC had agreed to inspect two areas — Lal Kuan and Tughlakabad — by sending its officers there with a list of deleted voters’ names.
Sharing Chadha’s letter on Twitter, Kejriwal said the BJP got the names of lakhs of voters deleted in Delhi “as the last resort” to win the upcoming elections.
“BJP is losing. This seems to be the last resort of BJP. They have got lakhs of names deleted from voter lists. Hope EC would take immediate action,” he tweeted.
Calling the inspection a complete farce, Chadha also sought an intervention by the Chief Election Commissioner in the matter.
“…such a large-scale deletion of voters from the electoral roll in the absence of any pre-deletion inquiry, verification or hearing is a clear indication of a concentrated effort towards rigging the polls and against the very fabric of democracy,” Chadha asserted.
The AAP leader said that the matter of poll officers carrying inaccurate list calls for a “thorough audit” by the Chief Election Commissioner.
“The sheer magnitude of electoral fraud, coupled with the shocking manner in which your intervention has also been derailed, discloses call for a thorough audit, a fresh investigation and an urgent, immediate, independent and time-bound inquiry in respect of all the deletions since 2015 Assembly elections,” he said.
