Over a month after the Aam Aadmi Party first alleged that a large number of eligible voters were being struck off the rolls, there is a lack of clarity among Delhiites affected by the ongoing revision of the electoral roll.
AAP leader and Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia had addressed a press conference on November 3 alleging that voters who the Election Commission of India had deleted apparently for having “shifted” from their address had not moved. He shared a list of nine voters from his constituency, Patparganj, that he said had been struck off the rolls incorrectly.
When The Hindu tracked down some of the voters last week, some of them had indeed shifted, some had continued to stay at the same address as the one mentioned in their voter ID and nearly all had no information about what to do next.
‘Shifted a year ago’
In Mandawali’s Chander Vihar, the uncle of a voter, Mohd. Nawshad, who according to Mr. Sisodia had been deleted incorrectly, said Nawshad and his immediate family had shifted from the address mentioned in the ID this year.
Another voter on the list, Pooja Gupta, also a Chander Vihar resident, said she was not aware that her name had been struck off the rolls. “I have never voted,” she added.
The father of another voter on Mr. Sisodia’s list, Vilas Mehra, a resident of IP Extension, said he had received a phone call from an AAP worker informing him that his daughter Swati had been struck of the roll. “She has not shifted. She is very much here. We have lived here for the past 24 years,” said Mr. Mehra, adding that the family had not yet checked whether their names were on the list or not.
In Mandawali’s Jawahar Mohalla, most names that had been struck off the list had been of those who had moved away or died, several residents said.
“In my family, four votes were cut. My mother passed away, my brother moved away for work and my sister got married and shifted, so their votes were cut. Only my sister-in-law, who has lived here for 11 years, had her name cut even though she has not shifted,” said Heena, a resident of the jhuggis in Jawahar Mohalla.
Filling up forms
Her sister-in-law, Ishrat, added that the AAP workers who had visited the area a few weeks ago had told her that they would help her get her name back on the rolls, however, she had not filled out any forms yet.
Another Jawahar Mohalla resident, A.P. Poddar, who said he had been a BJP polling agent in past elections, said about 25 names of voters had been cut in his street, but “all of them had moved away”.
Mr. Sisodia did not respond to request for comment. On November 1, AAP national convener and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal wrote to then-Chief Election Commissioner O.P. Rawat alleging that lakhs of would-be AAP or Congress voters had been removed from the rolls. In the month that followed, the AAP raised the ante, attacking the Election Commission for deleting 10 lakh votes at the behest of the BJP, then revising the number to 30 lakh.
This month, the AAP has accused the EC of deleting votes of people from the Bania, Poorvanchali and Muslim communities — the three groups the party said would not support the BJP in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
While the AAP says its analysis of the draft roll published on September 1 has led it to the figure of 30 lakh deletions since the 2015 Delhi Assembly polls, the Chief Electoral Officer of Delhi has said 1.41 lakh electors were removed since the last draft was published in October 2017. As part of the revision exercise, the CEO’s office had held meetings and consultations before releasing the draft roll on September 1 and the final publication of the roll is supposed to be done on January 4, 2019.
‘No issues raised earlier’
With the AAP raising issues with the process now, the Opposition BJP has said the party did not allege any irregularities during an all-party meeting held by the CEO on August 31.
According to the minutes of the meeting, which The Hindu has accessed, representatives of the AAP did not broach the topic of deletion of names or express any apprehensions in relation to the issue.
In fact, while the AAP asked for lists of polling booths, representatives of all the other political parties present — the BJP, the Congress, the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), the Communist Party of India (CPI) and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI-M) — chose to discuss issues related to additions to, and deletions from, the electoral rolls.
“The representative of BJP requested that the process of addition/deletion/correction should be continued after the Special Summary Revision…The representatives of BSP, CPI & CPI(M) requested that the deletions should be done carefully…The representatives of the INC pointed out the problems of residents of the border areas registering their names in the electoral rolls…” the minutes of the meeting state.
The Assembly Constituency-wise list of polling stations with their locations — both existing and newly-created as requested by representatives of the AAP, the minutes go on to state, were provided to all the representatives of political parties present.
‘Attempt to mislead’
BJP leader Vijender Gupta, who is also the Leader of the Opposition in the Delhi Assembly and represented his party at the meeting, said, “This is the latest low that the AAP has sunk in its attempt to mislead the people of Delhi in the run-up to the Lok Sabha elections, in which it fears a massive defeat.”
Mr. Gupta said the AAP was insisting that 30 lakh names had been deleted from electoral rolls in spite of data from the EC saying 13 lakh names had been added.
“Pankaj Gupta and Dilip Pandey [AAP leaders] remained tight-lipped and didn’t raise any question regarding the deletion of voters in the electoral roll at the all-party meeting. Months after the meeting, when the special session of the Delhi Assembly was held on the issue, not even a single MLA raised the issue,” he said.
Mr. Gupta and Mr. Pandey did not respond to requests for comment.
