Kejriwal moves EC over deletion of voters' names

New Delhi: Ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Thursday alleged that names of lakhs of voters had been axed from electoral rolls in Delhi and blamed the BJP for it.

In a letter to Election Commissioner O.P. Rawat, Kejriwal said that most people whose names have been deleted exist and the deletion had been done "with mala fide intent". 

"The procedure prescribed under law for deletion of names has not been followed in almost all cases, which raises suspicion about the motives," Kejriwal said.

Kejriwal approached the poll panel after the Aam Aadmi Party's (AAP) South Delhi Lok Sabha in-charge Raghav Chadha claimed that about 100,000 voters' named have been dropped from the South Delhi parliamentary constituency alone at the behest of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). 

"A cursory perusal of the deleted names shows that most of these votes belong to either the Congress or AAP. Therefore, it is likely that some officers have done it at the instance of the BJP to prevent them from voting," Kejriwal alleged.

In his letter, Kejriwal said that he ordered an enquiry in nine such cases and found that the names were deleted following a door-to-door survey conducted by booth level officers (BLO) in July. 

"The BLO could not locate their houses during the survey... Letters sent through Speed Post to these voters subsequently also remained undelivered," he said. 

"Now after I ordered the enquiry, the officers have got Form 6 filled from five of them and have promised that Form 6 from the rest four would also be filled," he said. 

"If the BLO could not locate the houses during the door-to-door survey, how could he locate their houses so easily after the enquiry was ordered?" Kejriwal asked.

Calling the whole exercise a "huge scam" with grave implications on democracy, Kejriwal urged the Election Commission to take "exemplary penal action" against the officers involved.

"Deleted names need to be added back for those people who actually exist. Since elections are approaching, it needs to be done on a war footing."

He also requested the Election Commission to provide a list of deleted names to all political parties in soft and hard copy so that the voters could be approached immediately.

"The Election Commission should also depute adequate manpower to approach each deleted name and get them to fill Form 6," Kejriwal said.