Lucknow: Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav on Monday accused the BJP of conspiring to delete the votes of PDA groups and minorities during the ongoing Special Intensive Revision process of the electoral rolls in Uttar Pradesh.
Addressing a press conference at the party office, Yadav alleged that votes were being illegally deleted through Form 7 applications and claimed that the Election Commission was not taking action. He said the BJP wanted to win elections by getting votes removed from the rolls.
“They are stealing votes through Form 7. The Commission is not acting. The BJP government wants to win elections by cutting votes,” he said.
The SP chief claimed that in a secret meeting of the BJP it was decided that votes would be deleted in every assembly constituency. Citing Kannauj, he said a local leader had made remarks suggesting that educated people sometimes make mistakes. “The BJP knows it is not winning the Uttar Pradesh election this time, so it is trying to find ways to get the opponent’s votes deleted. The public knows everything and will respond. We will not remain silent and will not allow any fraud in votes,” he said.
Yadav cited cases from different constituencies to back his allegations. In Sakaldiha assembly segment, 16 Form 7 applications were submitted. At booth number 365 in Babaganj assembly constituency, he alleged that around 100 votes were deleted using forged signatures on Form 7. He claimed that even the vote of one of the party’s booth level agents was deleted. “This is a direct conspiracy to remove the names of genuine voters,” he said.
He further alleged that the name of the SP’s Auraiya city president was removed from the voters’ list and that the wife of the party’s MLA from Sikandarpur in Ballia also had her name deleted. “This is a strategy to keep the opposition entangled by targeting its own voters,” he said.
Giving the example of Ayodhya, Yadav said that 181 notices were issued at one booth, of which 76 percent were to people from PDA communities. He claimed 46 percent of the notices went to voters from Yadav and Muslim communities. In Ayodhya, the SP submitted 47 Form 7 applications, while the BJP submitted around 1,000, he alleged.
The SP chief also claimed that the BJP had added one crore votes in the past and demanded FIRs against those responsible. He was reacting to the provisional voters list released by the State Election Commission after the SIR exercise.
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Yadav said BJP workers were now under pressure to increase votes because many of their votes had been deleted. “They had created fake voters. This means fake votes were cast and the highest number of such votes were found at BJP booths,” he alleged.
Thanking the people of Uttar Pradesh, he said the BJP, which had troubled the country through the SIR process, was now unsettled by the same exercise and was holding secret meetings.
