The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Friday lodged a complaint with the Election Commission against the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Friday for “harassing and misleading” voters and falsely accusing it of deletion of 30 lakh names from the electoral list.

Vijender Gupta, leader of opposition in Delhi Assembly, along with senior party leaders, lodged the complaint, alleging that the AAP, through its call centres, is running a negative campaign to mislead voters in Delhi. They requested the chief electoral officer (CEO) of Delhi to take necessary action to ensure voters’ data is not misused by the AAP.

Gupta said, “They (AAP) are running a misinformation campaign in the city. The AAP continues to fund a large number of call centres from where executive are calling people and telling them that their names have been deleted. We have requested the Delhi CEO to take immediate measures in this regard.”

In the last few days, AAP has been aggressively raising the issue of voter deletion. BJP members said the AAP is trying to garner the support of the traders’ community, which is considered a BJP votebank, by highlighting the issue of sealing drive in the city and misleading people that the BJP is getting their votes deleted.

Delhi BJP chief Manoj Tiwari hit out at Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal for questioning the election commission.

Reacting to Kejriwal’s tweet asking MLAs to assemble outside the Election Commission of India, Tiwari said, “The way he has asked his party people to assemble outside the Election Commission of India’s office, it has been proved that he and his party have no respect for the Constitution and constitutional authorities.”

In a tweet, Tiwari said that Kejriwal is instigating people as the court has summoned him in a matter regarding deletion of votes.

The office of chief electoral officer, Delhi, on Friday once again clarified that the allegations levelled by AAP are baseless. “Allegations made by political parties that lakhs of voters’ names have been deleted are not true. At least two lakh electors have been added to the rolls since January 2019 and more names are being added to the list every day,” said a senior official of the Delhi CEO’s office

“We have already lodged a complaint with the police requesting action against “misleading calls” being made to voters across the city claiming that their names have been deleted from the electoral rolls. Systematic Voters Education and Electoral Participation campaigns are being organized to educate voters. We are also asking electors to check their names on the voters’ list. We are getting at least 3000 phone calls every day on our helpline,” the official said.

First Published: Mar 16, 2019 05:11 IST