AAP mud-slinging through phone calls: Tiwari

 New Delhi: The BJP's Delhi unit on Tuesday accused the ruling AAP of spreading rumours against it by making phone calls to city residents and lying to them that the saffron party was involved in the alleged deletion of their names from the voters’ list. 

The BJP's Delhi unit chief at a press conference shared an audio clip of a purported conversation between two people -- one of them allegedly an AAP volunteer and the other a city resident. In the audio clip, the caller can be heard telling the other person that his vote was deleted because of the BJP and that his name was added to the electoral roll again because of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal.
 
"I cannot believe that the AAP and Kejriwal can stoop this low," Tiwari said. He said AAP leaders, including Kejriwal, had spread "rumour" that 30 lakh votes had been deleted in Delhi and that an RTI reply proved it wrong. Actually, the number of votes in Delhi has increased by 1.5 lakh, he said. 

"We had opposed the Delhi government's move to gather details of parents of students in schools run by it. Now, AAP volunteers are making phone calls to voters, blaming BJP for deletion of their names and are taking credit saying Kejriwal got their names added to the voters’ list again," Tiwari said.
 
Delhi BJP spokesperson Harish Khurana said he will lodge a complaint against the AAP with the Election Commission with regard to the phone calls being made by its volunteers.
 
The AAP contested the allegation, saying it was not a "crime" to tell voters who got their names added to the electoral rolls, and insisted that lakhs of votes were “illegally” deleted.  “This is true that lakhs of voters’ names were illegally deleted from the voters list.

 The AAP, its MLAs and volunteers organised camps to register those voters again. This process is still going on. We believe that adding these genuine voters is not a crime or telling this to voters is not a crime," said AAP's chief spokesperson Saurabh Bhardwaj. 

The AAP had earlier accused the BJP of being involved in the alleged deletion of lakhs of votes of trader and Purvanchali communities in the national capital, after the 2015 assembly elections in Delhi.