AAP manipulating votes in Delhi to win upcoming Assembly polls, says BJP

The BJP on Saturday accused the Arvind Kejriwal-led Aam Aadmi Party of "manipulating votes" in Delhi to win the upcoming Assembly elections.

In a press conference, Delhi BJP president Virendra Sachdeva, sharing data of voters in the last Lok Sabha and Assembly polls, claimed that lakhs of minority voters were added to the electoral rolls.

He claimed that many Hindu house owners in Tughlaqabad and Kalkaji constituencies, currently held by AAP, have complained that many minority community persons were registered as voters.

The BJP leaders also presented the complainants from Tughlakabad in the press conference.

The district election officer cum district magistrate of southeast Delhi in a post on X said the issues raised by the BJP in its press conference are being examined by the concerned electoral registration officers.

"Appropriate action shall be taken as per the Representation of People Act as well instructions/guidelines of ECI," said the officer.

Kejriwal is trying to "rig" the elections with the AAP government promoting "fake" schemes and creating "fake voter IDs" using "fraudulent" Aadhaar cards, Sachdeva alleged.

The AAP has already accused the BJP of colluding with poll officials to get votes of AAP supporters deleted in bulk across Delhi.

Before the 2015 assembly elections, the voter count in Delhi increased by 14 lakh in just eight months, jumping from approximately 11.9 million in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections to 13.3 million, said the Delhi BJP president.

Afterwards, ahead of 2019 Lok Sabha polls only six lakh voters were added to the electoral rolls in four years. However, within the next eight months, before the 2020 assembly elections, the voter count jumped by another nine lakh to over 1.48 crore, he said.

BJP demanded that the Election Commission conduct a thorough investigation into these new voter applications in Delhi, he said, claiming most of the newly registered voters were in their 40s and one was even 80 years old.

"How come they did not get registered as voters earlier? There are also questions like who are these people and where did they live," he said.

He also claimed that the names of many voters who died or shifted from Delhi still exist in the voter's list.