The Congress on Monday alleged that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in Rajasthan is conspiring to manipulate the voter lists by trying to remove voters supporting the opposition party. The Congress claimed that these secret operations were directed by Union Home Minister Amit Shah and BJP national general secretary (organisation) BL Santosh.
Addressing a press conference here, Rajasthan Pradesh Congress President Govind Singh Dotasara and Rajasthan Leader of Opposition (LOP) Tika Ram Juli alleged that the process of deletion of voters’ names suddenly accelerated after the visit of BL Santosh and later Union Home Minister Amit Shah.
Dotasara said that initially everything seemed normal, but Santosh visited the state on January 3 and held meetings with party leaders, after which a fraudulent process of deletion and addition of names from the voter lists began.
The Rajasthan Congress President alleged that the Congress was already apprehensive that the BJP and the Election Commission together would extend the deadline of the SIR so that the names of people associated with the Congress ideology could be removed from the voter list. He said that is exactly what happened. He alleged that the process of removing voters’ names from the electoral rolls was done secretly and rapidly between January 3 and January 13, which coincided with Amit Shah’s visit to the state.
Elaborating on the manipulation of voter lists, he revealed that thousands of fake computerized forms were printed for each assembly constituency and handed over to ministers, BJP MLAs and unsuccessful candidates in the elections. He alleged that assembly seats won by the Congress were specifically targeted in this campaign, which he described as “vote theft”. He said that as per the rules, after the draft voter list is published, the booth level agent can submit a maximum of 10 forms per day, but BJP MLAs and ministers handed over thousands of forms with fake BLA signatures to the SDM.
He further said that many BLA members of BJP have publicly stated before the media that they had not submitted any such forms and their signatures were forged. He revealed that the SDM of his own constituency refused to accept forms with forged signatures.
Speaking to ANI, Tika Ram Juli said, “The SIR program was running smoothly till Amit Shah’s visit. After his visit, applications started coming in to remove names of Congress voters. People are saying that they did not give any application. We are going to the Election Commission and will also register a case. They are scared and are trying to come to power by cutting into the opposition’s votes, but we will not let them succeed.”
