The Election Commission on Friday instructed the Delhi Chief Electoral Officer to cross-check all deletions in polling stations where more than 2% of the electors had been removed from the voters’ list.
The chief electoral officer was also asked to check deletions in cases where the same person had objected in more than five cases. The poll panel stated that any elector from the same Assembly constituency can object to the inclusion of a name on the electoral rolls if the person had permanently relocated or died.
The Assembly polls in Delhi are expected to take place in or before February. The Election Commission has not announced the schedule yet.
The instructions came hours after the Bharatiya Janata Party submitted a memorandum to the poll panel requesting the removal of alleged undocumented migrants and “ghost voters” from the electoral rolls of the national capital.
On Wednesday, Delhi’s ruling Aam Aadmi Party had also urged the Commission not to undertake mass deletion of voters from the list before the polls.
The Election Commission instructed the chief electoral officer that the grievances raised by the two political parties “has to be examined carefully” and necessary action needs to be taken “strictly following the laid down statutory provisions and commission/s guidelines contained in the manual of electoral rolls”.
On December 6, the Aam Aadmi Party chief Arvind Kejriwal claimed that the BJP had asked the poll panel to delete the names of thousands of voters from the electoral rolls ahead of the polls.
The former chief minister had claimed that his party had investigated a few names that the BJP sought to delete in a particular constituency and found that several of them were Aam Aadmi Party supporters.
Kejriwal claimed that the BJP had submitted petitions to the poll panel seeking the deletion of voters’ names in Shahdara, Janakpuri, Laxmi Nagar and RK Puram, among other areas of the national capital.
The former chief minister had alleged that the Election Commission was “secretly” taking action to delete the names.
On Friday, a BJP delegation led by the party’s Delhi chief Virendra Sachdeva filed a complaint against “lakhs of illegal infiltrators of Rohingya and Bangladeshi origin”, alongside “duplicate voters” and “thousands dead persons in the voter lists”.
The delegation included Union minister Harsh Malhotra and New Delhi MP Bansuri Swaraj.
Sachdeva urged the Election Commission to launch a campaign against illegal voter enrolment, including issuance of warnings on radio and in print media about bogus voters.
The BJP said that Swaraj had presented purported voter list pages to the panel showing duplicate voters, and alleged that the block-level officers were not removing the names of deceased voters despite evidence.
“The government of Delhi is creating the false narrative that BJP is objecting to voters of Indian-origin in the voter list but the truth is that BJP is objecting to infiltrators and bogus voters,” The Indian Express quoted Malhotra as saying.
Limited-time offer: Big stories, small price. Keep independent media alive. Become a Scroll member today!
Our journalism is for everyone. But you can get special privileges by buying an annual Scroll Membership. Sign up today!