Delhi’s former chief minister, Arvind Kejriwal, on Friday alleged that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) masterminded the exercise of removing thousands of voters’ names from the electoral rolls in a bid to influence the forthcoming assembly polls in Delhi. Addressing a press conference, the AAP dubbed this electoral exercise as BJP’s planning with the EC as submitted applications for the deletion of 11,018 voters in the Shahdara constituency.
“Applying the same check, we tried cross-checking with 500 people in the list of voters and out of them, only 75% had stayed at the address mentioned in their application. Yet now, their names are in danger of being struck off the voter list,” AAP convenor said.
Kejriwal said that he was worried by reports of selective removal of voters, adding that the majority of them were AAP supporters. He pointed out that AAP had narrowly emerged victorious in the Shahdara constituency in the 2020 assembly elections by just 5000 votes, with Ram Niwas Goel of AAP defeating Sanjay Goyal of BJP.
Thus, this deletion drive is a way of influencing the electoral process.” If the names of as many as 11,000 voters are deleted from the constituency, particularly when many of them are supporters of AAP, then these elections may be questionable,” Kejriwal said.
He went on to stress the general concern, saying that it was a threat to democracy. “The right to vote is a basic tenet of democracy. The BJP and EC are denying the people of this country their constitutional right to elect their government through targeting voters and deleting their names,” he further observed.
Kejriwal has requested the Election Commission to be neutral and refer to the names of those citizens who can vote. He also urged the public to be vigilant and make sure they are not removed from the role unfairly while urging free and fair elections.
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