Rajasthan SIR: BJP fraudulently removing Opposition supporters from voter lists, alleges Congress

The Congress on Monday accused the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party in Rajasthan of conspiring to fraudulently remove voters who support the Opposition from the electoral rolls using allegedly forged forms during the special intensive revision in the state.

Addressing a press conference, Leader of the Opposition in the Assembly Tikaram Jully and Congress’ state chief Govind Singh Dotasra demanded a forensic investigation into the forms that had been used to seek the deletion of voters’ names.

Dotasra said that the draft voter rolls published on December 16 in Rajasthan showed that about 45 lakh persons had been found to be absent, shifted or deceased.

The persons who had been removed from the voter list could file their claims and objections till January 15 and the deadline was on Thursday extended by the Election Commission to January 19.

“Until January 3, there was no chaos, and the entire system was running smoothly,” he alleged. “However, on January 3, BJP’s National General Secretary (Organisation) BL Santosh visited Rajasthan, held a meeting there, and then the process of fraudulently adding and removing votes began.”

The BJP has not commented on the allegations. But BJP leader and state minister Gautam Dak said on Monday that if a voters’ name is proposed to be removed, the person gets time to be heard. The Congress merely wants an issue to create dispute, First India News quoted Dak as saying.

Citing data from the Election Commission website, Dotasra claimed on Monday that between December 17 and January 14, the BJP submitted applications through 937 booth-level agents to add 211 names and delete 5,694 voters.

During the same period, the Congress submitted applications through booth-level agents to add 185 names and delete two voters, Dotasra said.

“We had already expressed our apprehension that the BJP and the Election Commission, in collusion, would extend the date to strike off the names of people aligned with the Congress ideology,” he alleged. “And in the end, that’s exactly what happened.”

Dotasra added: “In Jhunjhunu, 13,882 form 7s were taken for name deletions in a single day. In Mandawa, 16,276. In Udaipurwati, 1,241. In Khetri, 1,478 were taken. Meanwhile, 1,40,000 forms were even registered.”

Form 7 is an application submitted to the Election Commission to remove names from the electoral rolls.

The Congress leader told reporters on Monday that Union Home Minister Amit Shah visited the state on January 13 and stayed at the chief minister’s residence. Dotasra claimed that a “secret operation” had taken place within the BJP between January 3 and January 13.

“In every Assembly constituency, 10 thousand to 15 thousand fake computerised forms are printed,” he claimed. “All MLAs and MLA candidates are summoned, including ministers.”

He claimed that on January 13, January 14 and January 15, thousands of forms were submitted in every Assembly constituency to strike off names from the voter lists. “These efforts are especially targeted at those Assembly areas where the Congress had won the election,” Dotasra alleged.

The forms were distributed to remove the names of persons associated with the Congress ideology, he claimed. Additionally, forms were hastily distributed to remove the names of groups “angry with the double-engine government and those above 60 years of age”, he alleged.

“The rule book states that after draft publication, a single booth-level officer can submit only 10 forms in one day, no more,” Dotasra noted. “…the tally of forms submitted up to January 14 is right in front of you.”

The Congress leader claimed that BJP MLAs, ministers and party candidates had “forged” signatures of booth-level agents and submitted thousands of forms to every sub-divisional magistrate.

“In my own Assembly constituency, 627 forms were submitted, and when they took 2,000 more forms again, the SDM [sub-divisional magistrate] refused to accept them,” Dotasra claimed.

He added that several booth-level agents had given statements to the media that they had not signed these forms, and that the signatures were forged and the applications were incomplete.

The Congress leader said that his party had informed Rajasthan Chief Electoral Officer Naveen Mahajan about the alleged fraud. “We have told him that immense pressure is being put on the officers, telling them that they have to accept our forms if they want to keep their jobs,” Dotasra alleged.

He added: “We have demanded lists from several district collectors…by January 15, the BJP has managed to register nearly 1,40,000 names.”

Dotasra also said that the BJP leaders claimed that they were removing the names of Bangladeshis and Rohingyas from the voter lists when asked about the deletions.

The Congress will “not allow a murder of democracy in the state”, he added.

Earlier too, the Opposition party had accused the ruling BJP of orchestrating mass deletion of voters during the special intensive revision of electoral rolls in the state, The Indian Express reported on Sunday.

This came after a video, showing a booth-level officer alleging that he was being pressured to delete hundreds of voters from the rolls of his Hawa Mahal Assembly constituency in Jaipur, was widely shared on social media.

In the video, Kirti Kumar, a government teacher deployed as a booth-level officer as part of the exercise, can purportedly be heard saying on a call: “I will visit the collector’s office and will kill myself there.”

Kumar told The Indian Express that he was speaking with the councillor of the area, “who was pressuring me to delete the names”.

He has alleged that he was being “threatened and pushed beyond capacity” to look into the BJP’s objections seeking the deletion of 470 voters, mostly Muslims, from the draft electoral rolls, reported Newslaundry on Thursday.

Hawa Mahal is a Muslim-majority constituency that BJP MLA Balmukund Acharya won in the 2023 Assembly elections.

Suresh Saini, the councillor of the ward, denied Kumar’s allegations, claiming that there was large-scale fraud in the voter list of the area, according to the newspaper.

“Fake addresses are being used to register fake voters,” he was quoted as having said. “I raised objections and applied for the removal of such names with supporting evidence. This amounts to voter fraud by the Congress.”

The special intensive revision of electoral rolls is underway in 12 states and Union Territories, including Rajasthan. The exercise is currently in the claims and objections stage in the state.

In Bihar, where the revision was completed ahead of the Assembly polls in November, at least 47 lakh voters were excluded from the final electoral roll.

Concerns had been raised after the announcement in Bihar that the exercise could remove eligible voters from the roll. Several petitioners had moved the Supreme Court against it.