BJP Wants To Strike 11,000 Voters Off Rolls, Most Of Them AAP Supporters: Kejriwal Ahead Of Delhi Election

Arvind Kejriwal accused the BJP of attempting to cancel over 11,000 votes, alleging that many of these voters are still living at their registered addresses.

Aam Aadmi Party supremo Arvind Kejriwal on Friday made big allegations against the Bharatiya Janata Party saying the saffron party submitted applications with the Election Commission to cancel the registration of over 11,000 voters in the national capital ahead of assembly polls. 

Addressing a press conference, the former Delhi Chief Minister said the filed applications with the Election Commission of India (ECI) to delete the names of thousands of voters in Shahdara, Janakpuri, Laxmi Nagar, and other seats.

"...BJP has given application to cut votes in their letterhead. They had already given applications to cut votes of 11,000 people, in the last 1-1.5 months and that process is underway," Kejriwal said during the press conference on Friday. 

Kejriwal further alleged that the reason stated by the BJP behind the cancellation of the votes was that either the voters shifted elsewhere or died. However, many voters were still living on their registered addresses, he added. 

"In applications, it is said that these 11,018 people have either shifted or passed away. For us, to check all these 11,000 applications was impossible so we checked 500 randomly... among these 500, 372 were found to be staying there only (at their address)...they haven't shifted anywhere... which means 75% of their list is troublesome," said the AAP leader. 

Kejriwal also claimed that the maximum number of votes which the BJP sought to cancel were AAP voters. 

"When we inquired, maximum of these voters turned out to be AAP voters...if you get 6% of votes cut from one Assembly constituency then what is the point of holding elections...," he added. 

The AAP chief claimed his party won the Shahdara Assembly seat in the last elections by around 5,000 votes, and now names of around 11,000 voters are being deleted in that constituency and most of these voters are AAP supporters. 

BJP Hits Back

BJP dismissed the allegations saying it has nothing to do with the party and the EC is making verifications into the allegations. Party MP Bansuri Swaraj hit back at Kejriwal saying he should answer as to how 5 lakh voters were added to the electoral lists. 

"Kejriwal is scared, seeing the defeat he is making excuses," she said, adding the "allegations are baseless." 

"Kejriwal is giving such statements out of anger," said Delhi BJP media head Praveen Shankar Kapoor.