A Maharashtra Congress delegation met State Chief Electoral Officer S Chockalingam on Tuesday and alleged that the BJP was using the Election Commission to delete voters' names and deprive genuine voters of their constitutional right to vote.
Maharashtra Congress President Harshvardhan Sapkal alleged that a conspiracy being carried out across the country had now reached Maharashtra, where 3.28 crore voters had been deleted under the pretext of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR).
Sapkal said the SIR exercise was being carried out in a planned manner, but the ECI had neither published the list of deleted voters nor provided the relevant data. He alleged that there was no transparency in the process and described the functioning of the ECI as opaque and suspicious.
“This is a major conspiracy and an attempt to choke democracy by taking away people's right to vote,” Sapkal alleged.
Speaking to the media after meeting election officials, Sapkal said Maharashtra had 9.78 crore voters and that if 3.28 crore voters had been excluded, only 6.5 crore voters remained. He said government figures put Maharashtra's population at 12 crore, with more than 10 crore adults.
“Going by the given data, there should be...How can the figures provided by different departments of the government be different? This shows the Election Commission's contradictory functioning and negligence,” he said.
Sapkal also alleged that the ECI had not issued notices to the 1.22 crore voters whose names had been categorised as anomalies. He demanded that the data of all 3.28 crore suspected voters be published on the ECI's website, constituency-wise and booth-wise.
“Why is the Election Commission withholding these figures? What is being hidden? Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and the two deputy chief ministers are following the example being set across the country through SIR of depriving lakhs of voters of their rights. This is a major crisis for Maharashtra,” he claimed.