Aam Aadmi Party national convener Arvind Kejriwal on Thursday claimed that anti-BJP votes have been deleted across India at an “unprecedented scale”. In a series of tweets, Kejriwal tagged the people who claimed their names or the names of their relatives have been deleted from the voter lists.
“Anti-BJP votes deleted all across India. Reports coming from all across India that votes have been deleted on unprecedented scale. Why are all faulty EVM machines seen to be voting always for BJP?” he said in a tweet.
“Why are all faulty EVM machines seen to be voting always for BJP? Why do most deleted voters turn out to be anti-BJP voters?,” he said in another tweet. Replying to another tweet he said “Absolutely shocking. This has happened all across the country,”
Polling began Thursday morning in 91 constituencies spread across 18 states and two union territories in the first phase of Lok Sabha elections.
He re-tweeted and shared profiles of a number of people whose names have been deleted. One of them included business woman Kiran Mazumdar Shaw who said her mother’s name has been deleted. “My mother’s voter ID has been deleted on some flimsy excuse that there was a report that she no longer lives at her address. She is so upset I can’t tell you becos she has been at the same address for 19 years. So much for ‘verification’,” she said in a tweet.
Kejriwal also re-tweeted a tweet in which a Shobana Kamineni, who claimed she felt cheated after she was told at a polling booth in Hyderabad that her vote had been deleted. “I came back because I wanted to exercise my franchise. I came to the booth and I was told that my vote is deleted,” said Kamineni. Kamineni said she had voted at the same booth in December for the Telangana state polls.
Joining the party chief Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia tweeted “Dear ECI! We have been reporting this to you for last one year. But you said no votes deleted. Just because BJP was there behind all such illegal deletions? Now! What is this? A person living on same address for 19 years is not able to vote. Why are you killing democracy?”
“ ‘Election Commission of India!’ Please see what you are doing to ‘Voters of India’ So many people reporting about illegal deletion of their own votes. Is this the way you want to serve India? This nothing but serving BJP, Sisodia said in another tweet.
AAP has been targeting the BJP over alleged deletion of names of voters from the list after the poll panel came out with the final voter list in January. Earlier, the party had also alleged the “deletion” of names of 30 lakh voters, particularly of Purvanchali, Muslims and Bania communities, since the assembly election in Delhi in 2015.===============
