Delhi Cabinet convenes special assembly session to discuss attack on CM Kejriwal

The session, approved in the Delhi Cabinet meeting, will be held on Monday, deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia said. The issue of deletion of 30 lakh names in voters list across Delhi will also be discussed.

The Delhi government has called a one-day special session of the assembly to discuss the recent chilli powder attack on chief minister Arvind Kejriwal and the alleged deletion of 30 lakh voter names from electoral rolls in the national Capital.

Anil Kumar Sharma threw chilli powder at Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal outside his office in the Delhi Secretariat on November 20. (Raj K Raj/HT Photo)

The session, approved in the Delhi Cabinet meeting, will be held on Monday, deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia said.

“The one-day special session of the assembly will discuss the recent attack on the CM and the deletion of 30 lakh names in voter lists across the city,” Sisodia told reporters after the cabinet meeting presided over by Kejriwal.

The deputy chief minister said the government called the session in view of the Centre and the Delhi Police’s lackadaisical attitude over the incident involving the chief minister and the electoral “fraud” pertaining to the deletion of voter names.

A man from west Delhi was arrested on Tuesday when he tried to smear the chief minister’s face with chilli powder outside his office at the Delhi secretariat. The Delhi government and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) had blamed the Delhi Police for the security breach, alleging that the attack was carried out at the behest of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The comment drew criticism from the BJP, with its Delhi unit chief Manoj Tiwari accusing Kejriwal of stage-managing the attack in the run up to elections.

Sisodia alleged that Election Commission of India (ECI), in accordance with orders from the BJP, has deleted names of over 30 lakh voters from the electoral rolls in Delhi. The AAP has been making this allegation for quite some time now. The party’s national spokesperson Raghav Chadha even termed a survey by election officers earlier this week “farcical”.

Kejriwal writes to CEC again

On Thursday, Arvind Kejriwal wrote to chief election commissioner OP Rawat again, urging him to put the comprehensive list of deleted voter names in the public domain.

“I am completely shocked as to why you are trying to hide the names of those voters whose names have been deleted. After being told that such a large number of names of voters has been deleted, the CEC itself should have got into war mode to get it rectified...Kindly put a certified, complete and authentic deleted voter list in the public domain within a week,” the CM wrote.

On November 2, Kejriwal had met election commissioners, alleging that names of over 10 lakh voters, mostly supporting the AAP and the Congress, had been deleted in Delhi.

The poll panel officials said that during the November 2 meeting, the commission promised Kejriwal it would publish the list.

“Not just the AAP, we sent the list to all other political parties,” an ECI official said.