An Aam Aadmi Party delegation led by Arvind Kejriwal met the Election Commission on Wednesday to address allegations of mass voter deletions ahead of the Delhi Assembly elections.
The party's national convenor, following the meeting, alleged that the BJP was orchestrating a conspiracy to remove voters, mostly from marginalised communities, including Dalits, Scheduled Castes (SCs), and Purvanchalis, from the electoral roll.
"The BJP is snatching away the rights of people as an Indian citizen by cutting their votes in Delhi. BJP workers have given applications to cut the names of thousands of voters in many assembly constituencies," Kejriwal alleged.
When you cut the vote of a legitimate person, you are snatching away his basis of citizenship and the right to live in this country, he added.
"We have submitted 3,000 pages of evidence showing how the BJP is conspiring to delete voters' names on a mass scale," Kejriwal claimed.
Our demand was that this vote deletion should be stopped as the Election Commission has just done summary revision and FIRs should be filed against those who have applied for these vote deletion, he added.
Attacking the EC, the AAP supremo claimed, "A BJP official in Shahdara constituency secretly gave a list of 11,008 voters to the Election Commission to get them deleted and the commission secretly started working on it." He further stated that the EC provided several assurances, including that no large-scale deletions would occur before the Delhi elections.
The former chief minister of Delhi said that the EC has gave assurance that in cases of any voter deletions, a field inquiry will be conducted by the Booth Level Officer (BLO), accompanied by representatives from various political parties.
Kejriwal noted that if any individual applies to delete more than five voters' names, the concerned sub-divisional magistrate (SDM) will carry out a field inquiry.
The EC also assured AAP of strict action against those filing questionable deletion requests, he said.
The delegation included Delhi Chief Minister Atishi, Rajya Sabha MPs Sanjay Singh and Raghav Chadha, senior party leader Jasmine Shah, Pankaj Gupta, and Reena Gupta.
Calling the meeting successful, the AAP supremo expressed gratitude to the EC for their promptly action.
"If all the assurances given by the Election Commission are fulfilled, I think the people of Delhi need not worry about vote deletion," he added.
The alleged voter deletions have become a contentious issue as the Delhi Assembly elections, slated for February next year, draw near with AAP aiming for a third consecutive term after winning 62 out of 70 seats in the last elections.
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