Days after Chief Minister Atishi accused the Center of conspiring to remove AAP supporters from the electoral roll, his predecessor Arvind Kejriwal on Friday reiterated claims that the BJP was planning to wipe out votes from AAP strongholds ahead of the Delhi polls. The BJP hit back by accusing AAP of buying “votes” through “foreign donations”.
Kejriwal has also targeted Election Commission of India (ECI) officials, alleging that it is secretly processing BJP requests whose updates are missing from its website. “Until now, we have only heard stories about how Haryana and Maharashtra won. Today, we are presenting evidence to show what the BJP is doing in the Delhi elections,” he told mediapersons on Friday.
He alleged that BJP representatives applied to the ECI to evict thousands of legitimate voters, especially from constituencies like Shahdara, Janakpuri, Sangam Vihar and RK Puram.
Along with senior party leaders, Kejriwal presented documents purportedly from the BJP’s Booth Level Agents (BLAs) that listed over 11,000 transferred or deceased voters of Shahdara. He said that a similar list of other constituencies will be exchanged soon. While randomly verifying 500 voters on BJP’s list that the party claimed had moved out of Shahdara or died, AAP found that 372 were still living at their listed addresses, the party national coordinator said.
“About 75 per cent of the applications filed by the BJP may be false,” he added, adding that most of the names targeted for deletion were AAP supporters. He says that this will affect the voter list of Shahdara. “The BJP wants to remove 11,000 voters – 6 per cent of the constituency, which we won last time, by almost double the margin,” he said. In the 2020 elections, AAP won Shahdara by a margin of 5,294 votes.
However, Shahdara District Magistrate Rishita Gupta dismissed the AAP’s allegations as “factually false”.
“In Sahadara assembly constituency, only 494 Form 7s have been received since October 29. So, the claim of BJP claiming 11,018 Form 7s last month is factually incorrect,” Gupta said.
But AAP hit back saying Shahdara DM’s claim was misleading. “After receiving such a bad request, the AERO (Assistant Electoral Registration Officer) initiated the deletion process – by issuing a letter to its AEROs and BLOs on November 22… asking them to initiate the verification and subsequent deletion process.” AAP said.
An analysis of the ECI data showed that 263 names were deleted and 2,442 names were added in Shahdara. Meanwhile, Kejriwal claimed that other constituencies including Janakpuri (6,247), Sangam Vihar (5,862), and RK Puram (4,285) also had high requests for deletion. AAP also presented residents who claimed that their names were removed without notice.
Mahfuz Ali of Jhilmil said, “I have been voting here for 15 years. When the AAP workers came to check, I came to know that my name was removed. Shambhu Kumar of Shahdara said, “I was informed by AAP volunteers that the names of my entire family have been deleted. We have been living here for years.”
Kejriwal said, “We have demanded that no vote be deleted in Delhi after October 18 till the election. If an eligible voter is deprived of his right to vote, that is inadmissible. October 18 was the last date for door-to-door verification and removal of discrepancy through booth level officials. The final publication of the voter list for the election will be on January 6. The AAP chief also announced plans to take legal action against BJP officials responsible for filing these deletion requests.
Hitting back, Delhi BJP chief Birendra Sachdeva accused CM Atishi of threatening sub-divisional magistrates and DMs to remove “fake votes”.
“The identification of fake Rohingya and Bangladeshi voters has scared Kejriwal, and he now fears defeat,” he said. “These voter bases are funded by foreign donations… and bought by AAP. Now that their fraud has been exposed, they fear losing the next election,” he said.
“Removal of voter’s name from voter list is a lengthy legal process which is completely transparent… So, removal of vote is not that easy,” said New Delhi MP Bansuri Swaraj.