Kejriwal writes to EC, alleges nearly 1 lakh names removed from Delhi voter list

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has written a letter to the Election Commission of India alleging that names of around one lakh people were removed from the voter list in Delhi.

Addressing the media here, Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia on Thursday said that voting is the foundation of any democracy and not letting a voter vote would kill the essence of the democracy.

Blaming the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) behind the alleged discrepancies, Sisodia said, "Does the BJP wants to win elections by taking away voting rights from people? They know that they are losing the upcoming elections, so they are basically trying to manipulate the names in voters list from the areas they think the votes will go to their opposition party."

"On one hand we are trying to give voting rights to the person who lives under the metro pillar while on the other hand name of voters are being randomly removed on basis of some survey. There are only two grounds of removing a name from the voter list. One is that the person is dead and the second is if the particular person is not staying at his registered address," he added.

Sisodia further claimed that Kejriwal had got complaints that names of people had been removed illegitimately from the Delhi voter list following which a primary enquiry was ordered.

"After the enquiry was done it was found that there were nine such cases in which the election commission officials themselves had confessed that they had committed the error," he added.

The minister also appealed to the people of Delhi to confirm that their names are present in the voter list.

Kejriwal, in his letter, has also sought an appointment of the poll panel, Sisodia said.