AAP national coordinator Arvind Kejriwal, along with senior party leaders, on Wednesday appealed to the Election Commission (EC) to stop the “deletion” of voters’ names from the electoral roll ahead of the upcoming Delhi polls.
Kejriwal accused the BJP of hatching a conspiracy to exclude voters from marginalized communities including Dalits, Scheduled Castes and Purvanchals from the electoral roll.
He claimed that the commission had given many assurances, including that there would be no large-scale erasure before the election, and that strict action would be taken against those who submitted questionable applications to erase voter names.
Responding to the allegations, the Delhi BJP said that the AAP was looking for an excuse to hide its defeat in the elections, and that the campaign to remove illegal voter names would continue.
“BJP is taking away the rights of Indian citizens by taking away the votes of the people. BJP workers have applied to remove the names of thousands of voters in several assembly constituencies,” Kejriwal alleged.
“By erasing the vote of a valid person, you are taking away the citizenship of this country and the right to live,” he added.
Delhi BJP president Virendra Sachdeva responded by saying that AAP and Kejriwal are in “panic” due to their impending defeat. “Kejriwal knows that he is losing the battle and is looking for excuses to hide his defeat. The terror of Kejriwal and AAP clearly shows that these illegal votes were their party’s political strength,” he said.
“No matter how much noise Kejriwal and AAP make, BJP will campaign against dead persons, illegal intruders and votes registered using fake addresses,” he added.
Kejriwal claimed that they have submitted 3,000 pages of evidence “on how the BJP is conspiring to erase the names of voters on a large scale”. He said, ‘Since the Commission has recently made a summary amendment, we demanded that the deletion of votes should be stopped and an FIR should be registered against those who applied for the deletion of votes.
Saying that the meeting was a success, Kejriwal expressed his gratitude for the prompt action taken by the commission. “If all the assurances given by the commission are fulfilled, I think the people of Delhi need not worry about the cancellation of votes,” he added.
The AAP delegation included CM Atishi, Rajya Sabha MPs Sanjay Singh and Raghav Chadha, as well as senior party leaders Jasmin Shah, Pankaj Gupta and Reena Gupta.