Delhi Assembly wants door-to-door survey of electoral list
NEW DELHI: The Delhi Assembly’s special session culminated on Tuesday with the House passing a resolution for a door-to-door survey to identify the voters whose names were allegedly removed from the electoral list in the last three years.Earlier, the session’s second day started 30 minutes behind schedule due to low attendance of legislators. Both Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and his deputy Manish Sisodia were not present in the House. Environment minister Imran Hussain, Transport minister Kailash Gahlot and Social Welfare minister Rajendra Pal Gautam attended the session on the second day on Tuesday.
Greater Kailash MLA Saurabh Bharadwaj moved the resolution, which was adopted by the House. As per the AAP, about seven lakh people were removed from the voters lists of seven Lok Sabha constituencies in the last one and half years.
“Any democracy cannot be strong if the people are questioning the election process. In my own constituency, names of people who are alive have been struck off from the list,” AAP leader Alka Lamba said.
A physical copy of all deleted voters shall be provided to all recognised political parties in Delhi, the resolution said, adding that the chief electoral officer should immediately conduct door-to-door survey along with the representatives of all the political parties for ascertaining the veracity of all deleted voters.
According to the resolution, there were instances when person staying at the same address or in the same locality was deleted from the voter list without any due procedure.
“The officers of Chief Electoral Office, GNCT of Delhi have suo-moto deleted thousands of voters in each Assembly Constituency of Delhi without following the prescribed procedure or due process of law,” it said.
For the last one month, the ruling AAP has been claiming that there a ‘scam’ had resulted in exclusion of several voters from the electoral list in Delhi. Kejriwal had written to the Election Commission, alleging ‘deliberate alteration’ being made in the voter list in Delhi. The AAP blames the BJP for this exclusion of voters from the list.
‘AAP running misinformation campaign’
The BJP on Tuesday claimed the AAP was running a ‘misinformation’ campaign to mislead voters. “The resolution that the party has brought in is politically motivated. This is a pressure tactic on the new chief secretary, who was earlier the CEC of Delhi. All political parties should encourage electoral system and reforms,” Leader of Opposition, Vijender Gupta said. He presented a year-wise details of electoral list to debunk the AAP’s claims regrading the exclusion of voters.