Lucknow: SP president Akhilesh Yadav on Friday launched a fresh attack on the BJP and the EC over the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls, alleging attempts to manipulate voter lists and deprive people of their voting rights.
Addressing a press conference, Yadav said opposition parties across the country had raised serious questions about the SIR exercise, but the Election Commission had failed to provide satisfactory answers. He asserted that the BJP would face defeat in Uttar Pradesh despite what he described as attempts to influence the electoral process.
Referring to West Bengal, Yadav alleged that voters' names were deleted from electoral rolls and central security forces were deployed to influence the election outcome. He also mentioned former West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's legal intervention over alleged voter exclusions, claiming that affected citizens were entitled to exercise their voting rights.
Yadav further accused the BJP of using Form 7, which is meant for deleting names from electoral rolls, to target voters. He credited Samajwadi Party workers with identifying and stopping what he termed fraudulent attempts to remove names through the process.
Questioning Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath's claim that 1.27 crore Hindu votes had been deleted, Yadav asked how the Chief Minister obtained such information. He suggested that the Election Commission might have shared electoral data with the Chief Minister or his office.
He also referred to the Chief Minister's appeal to BJP workers, during Union Home Minister Amit Shah's visit, to ensure that two crore names were added to voter lists. Yadav argued that these figures indicated a potential shortfall of approximately 31,000 votes per Assembly constituency.
