Yogendra Yadav questions ECI over Bihar voter list citing discrepancies, deletions
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New Delhi: Political activist Yogendra Yadav questioned the final electoral rolls for Bihar, pointing to ‘discrepancies’ in the new voters added to the list and lack of ‘transparency’ in the deletions of voters.
Yadav came down heavily on the Election Commission of India after the state reportedly saw the removal of nearly 68.5 lakh names, which critics term as ‘large-scale disenfranchisement of marginalised communities’, Maktoobmedia.com reported.
Taking to social media Yogendra Yadav said: ‘As per the ECI, 16.93 lakh Form-6 applications for new voters were received till September 1, and any claims after that were not supposed to be included in the final rolls. Yet, the data shows 21.53 lakh new voters added. How did at least 4.6 lakh names get added after September 1?’
Citing the ECI’s statement that 3.66 lakh voters have been deleted from the draft rolls, Yadav asked how many of them were deleted because of having no eligibility documents and how many of them were deleted due to objections.
The Election Commission’s final list released on Tuesday following Special Intensive Revision (SIR) showed 7.42 crore registered voters, marking a 6% drop from the 7.89 crore recorded in June.
Activists and Opposition leaders came out against the ‘large-scale’ deletions alleging that the revision ‘disproportionately’ targeted marginalized communities thus putting vulnerable groups at risk of disenfranchising.
Questioning the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise, Bihar Congress chief Rajesh Kumar announced that ‘Congress workers will conduct a thorough evaluation of SIR across the entire state to assess how many names were added and how many were removed’.
Opposition the Congress and left-leaning parties in the INDIA bloc came down against the final voter list of Bihar with critics calling the process a ‘vote theft’ scheme.
Critics allege that the deletions targeted Muslims, Dalits, backward classes, and women terming it as a BJP-backed strategy to outwit Opposition strongholds.
It is reported citing claims that as many as 80,000 Muslim voters were removed in just one constituency, Dhaka in East Champaran.