NEW DELHI: The AAP Friday claimed that the Election Commission has agreed to its demand to probe, without the involvement of the Delhi police, the allegations that a call centre hired by the party was making "misleading" calls to people about the deletion of their names from electoral rolls.
Emerging out from the EC premises, after three rounds of meeting in the last 10 hours, Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia told reporters that senior officials of the commission listened "seriously" to AAP's complaints about the raids at the call centre, hired by the party to make people aware about the deletion of their names from voters' lists.
However, there was no immediate response from the Election Commission.
"The raids were conducted to harass call centre employees, including women who were made to stand," he alleged, adding, the EC, including the three election commissioners, listened to the AAP delegation, the Delhi CEO and the police officials.
"And, the Election Commission has agreed to hold a probe into the call centre issue, without the involvement of the police, which was our demand earlier," Sisodia told reporters.
AAP workers led by Sisodia, sat on a protest outside the Election Commission on Friday alleging that "politically motivated and illegal" raids were being conducted on the call centre.
After sitting for over three hours at the protest outside the Election Commission, Sisodia and Lok Sabha candidates Atishi and Raghav Chadha were called by the Election Commission to hold a joint meeting with police officials.
After the meeting, Sisodia said, "We are responsible for making those calls to tell the public about their vote deletion. Telling people about their rights is not a crime."
Sisodia earlier alleged that a fourth raid on the call centre was conducted barely an hour after he met Chief Election Commissioner Sunil Arora on Friday.
His delegation met the CEC to lodge a complaint against the Delhi police which, he claimed, was acting at the BJP's behest to harass call centre employees.
Special Commissioner of Police (Crime and EOW) Satish Golcha said an FIR was filed following complaints regarding bogus calls about the Delhi's electoral rolls and investigations were underway.
"As far as the allegations against us (Delhi Police) are concerned, we have already responded about them to the Hon'ble Election Commission. Moreover, no call centre owners have filed a complaint regarding harassment by our investigating team members," he said.
"Relevant facts of the matter are being ascertained. The investigation is being conducted strictly in accordance with the law. Nobody has been arrested in the case so far. We are ascertaining facts from the call centre from where such calls have been made," he added.
Sources said the call centre employees are being questioned to ascertain who gave them the work of making the calls, how did they procure data of the callers and on what basis were they making claims about the deletion of names of voters.
A BJP team had earlier met Arora and alleged that the AAP was making "misleading" phone calls about the city's electoral rolls.
Ahead of the Lok Sabha polls scheduled to begin on April 11, the Election Commission had directed the police to take "necessary action" against people making such calls.
An FIR was also filed in this matter.
The AAP leaders asserted that they were responsible for hiring the call centre employees to make people aware that names had been deleted from voters' lists and the police should question the leaders instead of the workers.
The AAP alleged that BJP got more than 30 lakh voters' names deleted in Delhi.
When the Aam Aadmi Party started talking about this issue and hired a call centre to inform voters about it, the BJP got rattled and ordered the Delhi police to harass the call centre employees, the party alleged.
During the earlier meeting with Arora, Sisodia urged the EC to direct Delhi police to stop the harassment of the call centre employees.
"The Delhi police is working like goons. We urged the EC to stop the Delhi police from doing it. They (Delhi police) are pressuring and harassing the call centre employees," Sisodia said.
Sisodia alleged that these raids by the Delhi police are "politically motivated and illegal" conducted at the behest of the BJP.
He said this is the fourth raid on the call centre in four consecutive days.
Delhi Chief Minister and AAP national convenor Arvind Kejriwal also questioned the CEC.
"Why is CEC raiding our call centres and asking for our data? What is our crime? Pl tell our crime at least," he said in a tweet.