AAP takes up mass voter ‘deletion’ issue with Election Commission

“BJP robbing Delhi’s democracy,” said AAP national convener Arvind Kejriwal on Wednesday following his meeting with the Chief Election Commissioner alleging mass voter deletion by the BJP, demanding action against officers and rejection of all such applications.

Reiterating his allegation, Kejriwal said the BJP had submitted applications regarding deletion of 11,018 voters in the Shahdara Assembly constituency in the last six weeks on the premise that these voters had either shifted out or some had passed away or some carried duplicate voter cards.

A seven-member delegation of AAP comprising Kejriwal, Delhi CM Atishi, Rajya Sabha MPs Sanjay Singh and Raghav Chadha, national secretary Pankaj Gupta, Jasmine Shah, and Reena Gupta were present during a meeting with the CEC Rajiv Kumar.

“We are grateful to the Election Commission for granting us a meeting at a short notice. We presented 3,000 pages of evidence before the Election Commission, showing how the BJP is conspiring to delete votes on a massive scale in Delhi. These are the votes of long-time residents, particularly the poor, SCs, Dalits, Purvanchalis, and those living in slums and unauthorised colonies,” the former Delhi CM said.

He further said that, in a similar fashion, the saffron party had also submitted such applications in Janakpuri, where 24 BJP workers applied to get names of 4,874 votes deleted; in Tughlakabad, 15 BJP workers applied to get 2,435 voter names deleted.

“A particularly shocking instance was at polling booth number 117 in Tughlakabad, where two individuals applied to delete 554 out of 1,337 total votes, which amounts to 40 per cent of the booth’s votes,” he added.

Similarly, in Palam, Kejriwal said that nine BJP workers applied to delete 1,641 votes; in Rajouri Garden, six BJP workers applied to delete 571 votes; in Hari Nagar, four BJP workers applied to delete 637 votes; in Karawal Nagar, two workers applied to delete 3,260 votes and in Mustafabad, one individual alone applied to delete 534 votes.

“We demanded an end to mass deletions. The Election Commission has just conducted a summary revision, and we asked for these deletions to stop immediately. We also demanded FIRs against those submitting such applications,” he said.

Kejriwal, in his letter, demanded that all these applications in Shahdara be rejected ab-intio and an FIR be registered against booth level agent – 1 of BJP in Shahdara constituency for violating rules. Action must be taken against officers of the Election Commission in the Shahdara Assembly constituency and all such applications in other districts should be also rejected, he pleaded.

“The EC assured us that if one person applies for more than five deletions, the SDM will personally conduct a field inquiry, accompanied by representatives of all parties. Upon our insistence, the EC has assured us it will consider filing FIRs against those who submitted fake deletion requests.” Kejriwal continued.

We have also submitted the names of individuals who applied for wrongful deletions in various constituencies to the EC, he concluded.