E-Paper
Submit ‘proof of deletion of Muslim, Yadav votes’ by Nov 10: EC to Akhilesh Yadav
Akhilesh Yadav made the sensational claim last month at the Samajwadi Party’s national convention on September 29 to explain the party’s defeat in the 2022 elections
NEW DELHI: The Election Commission (EC) on Thursday told Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav to “submit documentary proof” to substantiate his allegation last month that names of 20,000 voters from the Yadav and Muslim communities were deleted from almost all 403 assembly constituencies at the behest of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ahead of the state elections in February-March this year, people familiar with the matter said.
The election watchdog has asked Akhilesh Yadav to submit proof to back up his charges by November 10.
Akhilesh Yadav made the claim at the SP’s national convention on September 29 which gave him a third straight term as party chief. The 49-year-old former chief minister or his party hasn’t lodged a formal complaint with EC.
On Thursday, nearly a month after he first made the claim, EC decided to take cognisance of Akhilesh Yadav’s public statements considering his stature as a seasoned politician who is head of a state political party and a former chief minister. The unusual move came on the back of the commission’s assessment that Yadav’s allegations were “extremely serious” and have “far-reaching substantive and perceptional implications on the integrity of elections and thereby on democracy”, officials said, citing the communication to Akhilesh Yadav. HT has not seen a copy of the letter.
The EC communication asked Yadav for assembly-wise data on the number of voter names deleted and names of the alleged wrongful deletions, supporting evidence/documents of such wrongful deletions and complaints filed by party officials with any election official during the summary revision of the electoral list or the 2022 assembly elections, a person aware of the development said.
To be sure, EC officials said there was not a single complaint filed by any SP leaders that referred to the deletion of 20,000 voters in any UP constituency after November 1, 2021, till the conclusion of the elections. There was just one complaint by the SP candidate from the Aliganj assembly segment in Etah district that alleged the “deletion of 10,000 electors (from minority and scheduled caste)”. “On enquiry by the chief electoral officer, Uttar Pradesh, the allegations were found to be baseless, unsubstantiated and factually incorrect,” the person cited above said, quoting the EC letter.
Officials underlined that there were specific safeguards built into the system to ensure that there was no indiscriminate deletion of voters. It is for this reason that suo-moto deletion of names is prohibited during an election year. Besides, the law requires election officials to notify the person whose name is being deleted and another rule, requires local election officials to notify the election watchdog’s state chief if deletions on any account exceed 0.1% of the total voters.
Akhilesh Yadav is yet to comment on the EC move. In his speech after being re-elected SP chief last month, Yadav had projected his party as the only one in UP that could take on the BJP, explained his defeat in the 2022 elections to abuse of power by the ruling BJP government and urged followers of Ambedkar and Lohia to come together.
“The people voted for Samajwadis (in the Uttar Pradesh assembly polls). But the BJP people with their malpractices and misuse of government machinery snatched away the people’s government, and installed themselves,” he said. “And even the Election Commission let us down. The EC sided with booths in-charges of the BJP. The EC was hand in glove with BJP Panna Pramukhs in deleting the names of Muslim voters,” he alleged in his Sept 29 speech.
