An AAP delegation that had Arvind Kejriwal and Delhi chief minister Atishi met the Election Commission on Wednesday over alleged attempts by the BJP to make large-scale deletions from the voters’ list ahead of the Assembly polls next year.
The poll panel assured them that no mass deletion would occur before the elections and a range of checks would be enforced to prevent mala fide deletions, if any.
In its memorandum to the poll agency, AAP presented purported documentary evidence of BJP booth-level agents (BLAs) having applied for the deletion of 11,108 names on grounds of migration or death in the Shahdara constituency alone.
A survey by the party of 500 of these names found three-fourths of them to be valid voters staying at their given addresses. Kejriwal pointed out that this violated the commission’s norms that a BLA can submit only up to 10 deletion requests at a time and not more than 30 during the special summary revision of the electoral roll, which just concluded in Delhi.
He added in the memo: “We demand the FIR be immediately registered against the BLA-1 (of the BJP in Shahdara) under sections 61,174, 196, 217 and 318 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita 2023 and sections 31, 125 and 136 of the Representation of People Act 1950.”
The former chief minister also highlighted that the BJP has filed almost 14,000 applications for deletion in seven other constituencies.