In constituencies won by BJP, selective deletion of voters

A pioneering investigation by Newslaundry, a reader-supported media organisation, has raised fresh questions about the manner of addition and deletion of voters’ names in the electoral rolls.

While revision of electoral rolls begins in August and the revised list published in January, in an election-year the roll is revised further, explained officials of the election commission. The revision involves mandatory visits to homes by authorised officials—teachers or anganwadi workers—which do not always happen.

Asked why the deletions are unusually high in localities inhabited by people belonging to specific religions and caste perceived to be inimical to the BJP, officials explained that the election commission does not maintain any religion or caste-specific data.

In the age of computers, it should be a fairly simple and fast exercise though and the exercise has the potential to raise red flags and show trends that call for a review. 

The investigation spearheaded by Sumedha Mittal of Newslaundry picked up three Lok Sabha constituencies to examine. In Farrukhabad,  BJP’s Mukesh Rajput, one of the BJP MPs hospitalised on Thursday allegedly following a shove by Rahul Gandhi outside the parliament, won by a slim margin of 2,768 votes.

In Meerut, Arun Govil of BJP defeated SP’s Sunita Verma by 10,585 votes. And in Chandni Chowk, BJP’s Praveen Khandelwal won by over 90,000 votes. Some of the key takeaways of the survey are the following:

•       Over 32,000 voters were struck off the rolls in Farrukhabad, where the margin of victory was just 2,678 votes. The deletion rates were much higher in areas housing Yadav, Muslim, Shakya and Jatav voters as compared to localities with upper caste voters.

•       In just two booths in Meerut 27 per cent of existing voters were found to be bogus. While the BJP’s candidate won by 10,000 votes, more than one lakh voters were added in the Lok Sabha constituency this year.

•       In Chandni Chowk, Model Town, populated by Punjabi and upper caste voters, saw a deletion percentage three times lower than assembly segments housing Muslim and backward voters. Among the three booths with the highest deletions was one in the Congress candidate’s neighbourhood.

Former chief election commissioner S.Y. Quraishi has been quoted as saying that scope of manipulation of electoral rolls has always been there and that the EC is aware of it. EC officials told Newslaundry that it was up to the people and political parties to check the electoral rolls for mistakes and for the booth agents of political parties to raise objections.

A former election commissioner Ashok Lavasa told Newslaundry that during revisions, the commission is usually conservative about deletions even if the voter has shifted their house because the purpose is that no voter should be denied the right to vote.

However, none of the political parties, not even the BJP, seem to have agents in all the booths. In the Chandni Chowk assembly segment, out of the 129 booths, BJP had agents on 89 of them, ‘while AAP and Congress had zero agents”.

In Meerut district, out of 2,758 booths, BJP had 1,271 agents while the SP, Congress and BSP had none, the investigation found. Farrukhabad’s Aliganj was the only assembly where the opposition agents had a better presence. Out of the 395 booths, SP had agents on all of them, while the BJP had representatives on 360, BSP on 45, and the Congress on just 35 booths. 

Sasikant Senthil, Congress MP and chairman of its national war room, said, “The point of law is to do the due enquiry. It is wrong of the Election Commission to say that it is for the political parties to raise objections at the booth level. Yes, they also have a role but there is a senior level officer in-charge who has to do the due enquiry. They just have to go to the house and verify. But they are doing bulk deletions without due inquiry.”