AAP national convener Arvind Kejriwal has asked the Election Commission to crack down on an abnormal number of applications for transfer of voters to addresses linked to the BJP.
The former Delhi chief minister wrote to chief election commissioner Rajiv Kumar
explaining: "Shockingly, 33 new votes have been submitted for being transferred to the BJP's candidate Pravesh Verma's official residence. Are we expected to believe that overnight 33 people from across India have shifted their residence to that of Verma? Is this being done at the behest of the BJP candidate?"
He added: "Hundreds of new votes are being sought to be transferred to addresses of BJP leaders and premises…. It appears that several BJP Union ministers and members of the Union cabinet are involved in this malpractice."
The addresses listed by Kejriwal include those of BJP MPs C.P. Joshi, Kamlesh Paswan, Pankaj Choudhary, Jai Prakash, Rebati Tripura, Satish Kumar Gautam, Mithilesh Kumar, Chaudhary Singh Tanwar, C.M. Ramesh, Dharambir Singh, Surendra Singh Nagar, Congress MP Rahul Kaswan, and the office of BJP mouthpiece Kamal Sandesh. It also includes several shops, small homes, a temple and allegedly non-existent addresses.
The number of transfer applications ranges from 9 to 44 requests, to each address.
The BJP is yet to respond to Kejriwal on this latest charge. Any voter registration, transfer or deletion is supposed to be carried out only after field verifications by the election staff with the knowledge of booth-level agents nominated by recognised political parties. The BJP and the AAP have previously accused each other, without proof, of facilitating undocumented immigrants from Myanmar and Bangladesh to register as voters here.
Kejriwal added: "I urge the Election Commission to: 1. Immediately halt these suspicious voter transfers. 2. Investigate the involvement of BJP MPs and ministers whose residences are being misused for this malpractice and register a criminal FIR against those responsible. 3. Ensure strict action, including disqualification of candidates like Parvesh Verma who are facilitating such electoral fraud."
