“BJP trying to defeat AAP by cutting votes”: Manish Sisodia alleges large-scale voter deletion ahead of Delhi polls

New Delhi [India], December 11 (ANI): Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Manish Sisodia on Wednesday accused the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of deleting voters’ names from the electoral rolls ahead of the Delhi Assembly election to defeat Arvind Kejriwal.

Sisodia alleged that the BJP had submitted a large number of applications for the deletion of voters’ names from the electoral rolls, including those who have been living in the same area for years.

Speaking at a joint press conference with Raghav Chadha, Sisodia said, “When it has become impossible for them (BJP) to defeat AAP in Delhi, and when it has become impossible to stop Arvind Kejriwal, they are trying to defeat AAP by cutting votes. A large number of applications have been made to delete voters’ names from the electoral rolls, including those of people who have been living in the same area for years.”

Chadha while addressing the press conference questioned how the BJP-led central government could delete voters’ names from the electoral rolls by keeping political parties in the dark.

“One cannot get more than 10 voter deletion applications in a day, yet in a single day several 100 applications have been taken from one person for voter deletion. How can you do voter deletion by keeping you and the political parties in the dark? If someone’s vote is cut, the booth level officer of the election commission should go door to door and check whether that person is living there or not. And when he goes for house to house verification, he should take along with him representatives of all the political parties so that the entire process is conducted in a transparent manner,” Chadha said.

On December 6, AAP National Convenor Arvind Kejriwal accused BJP of ‘trying to cut votes’ from the voter lists ahead of the Delhi Assembly election.

Kejriwal alleged that the BJP had submitted an application to Election Commission of India to cut votes of 11,000 people, citing that either these people have shifted or passed away.

Kejriwal added that AAP randomly checked 500 people fom the list and found that 372 people are still living there.

“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. 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 so we checked 500 randomly. Among these 500, 372 were found to be staying there only (at their address). They haven’t shifted anywhere,” Kejriwal claimed that most of the voters in the list are AAP voters.

Earlier today, AAP national convenor Arvind Kejriwal ruled out any possibility of an alliance with the Congress.

In a post on X, Kejriwal said, “Aam Aadmi Party will be fighting this election on its own strength in Delhi. There is no possibility of any alliance with Congress.”

The statement comes after reports suggested that Congress and AAP were in the final stages of talks for a Delhi election alliance.

The Assembly polls in Delhi are expected to be held in early 2025. AAP won 62 out of the 70 seats in the 2020 assembly elections and BJP secured eighth seats.