The Aam Aadmi Party and the Bharatiya Janata Party on Wednesday continued to trade charges over the ongoing revision of electoral rolls in Delhi, with the AAP accusing the BJP of targeted deletion of votes.
The BJP hit back, saying the AAP had misled Delhiites by claiming that 30 lakh votes had been cut.
On Tuesday, Delhi BJP president Manoj Tiwari had said that AAP workers were calling up people to say that the BJP had got their names struck off the rolls, but AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal would restore them.
Chadha slams Tiwari
Responding to Mr. Tiwari’s statement, AAP leader Raghav Chadha said on Wednesday that the BJP had colluded with certain officials of the Election Commission for “targeted voter deletion” in Delhi.
He added that the BJP appeared desperate to retain power, so “30 lakh voters had been deleted”.
He said the AAP had been raising the issue for a few months now and had organised a drive to get the deleted voters’ to fill out forms to restore their votes.
“The AAP is dedicatedly working towards mass voter registration, and to inform people that the BJP has targeted and deleted their names from the voter lists. Mr. Tiwari and his party stand totally exposed,” said Mr. Chadha.
‘Telling lies’
Reacting to Mr. Chadha’s statement, Leader of Opposition in Delhi Assembly and BJP leader Vijender Gupta alleged that the AAP was “telling lies upon lies” about the deletion of 30 lakh names from voters’ list.
He added that Mr. Kejriwal or any other AAP leader had “so far not dared to reply” to the issues raised by the Election Commission in its letter to the Delhi government on December 14, 2018.
“The Commission had written a letter in response to the resolution adopted on November 27 by the Delhi Assembly regarding the alleged illegal deletion of names...it had taken cognisance of the fact that the Legislative Assembly had directed the Chief Electoral Officer of Delhi to conduct a door-to-door survey of all the deletions along with representatives from all the recognised parties,” Mr. Gupta said.
Alleging that the AAP was “hiding the period during which the said names have been deleted”, Mr. Gupta argued that records of Election Commission showed that “only 3.05 lakh names have been deleted from the four year period from 2015 to 2018”.