Opposition parties in Assam have escalated their “vote chori” allegations against the BJP ahead of the upcoming Assembly election in the state by filing complaints with police and the Election Commission of India on Friday, alleging a “conspiracy to delete the names of large numbers of genuine voters from the electoral rolls”.
The Assam Congress, which has also alleged the inclusion of “temporary voters” from other states during the ongoing Special Revision of electoral rolls, and other Opposition parties on Friday submitted a complaint at the Dispur police station. The Congress’s election management committee chairman Ripun Bora was accompanied to the police station by leaders from Raijor Dal, Asom Jatiya Parishad, CPI(ML) and CPI(M) — parties that have been trying to stitch together an anti-BJP alliance for the election set to take place later this year.
On the same day, the Raijor Dal also submitted a memorandum to the ECI, alleging plans by the BJP to “sabotage the electoral process in Assam”.
These allegations by the Opposition parties, over which they are trying to present a united front against the BJP, stem from claims by Raijor Dal chief and Sivasagar MLA Akhil Gogoi that he overheard a meeting of state, district and mandal BJP leaders. He alleged in his letter to the ECI that he heard state BJP chief Dilip Saikia direct “the MLAs, district presidents and mandal presidents to submit the list of anti-BJP legal voters for deletion from each booth of the 60 Assembly constituencies in Assam which didn’t vote for the BJP”.
Saikia has dismissed these allegations as baseless, saying, “The adding and deletion of names is done by the Election Commission. They (the Opposition) don’t have this common sense. They tried this in Bihar as well, but it fell flat.”
He said that all parties have their appointed Booth Level Agents to be a part of the revision process.
“The same voter list has been continuing with the names of people who died 30 years ago. There are people who have moved, who have been absent and not come to vote for the past four elections. In these cases, it is the ECI’s responsibility, as well as the people’s, to identify and correct the voter list. We want a correct voter list,” he said.
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However, the Opposition has continued to mount pressure on the BJP with these allegations.
In the complaint submitted to police, the Opposition parties alleged, “This is nothing but a larger conspiracy to delete the names of large numbers of genuine voters from the election rolls. Therefore, the culprits and conspirators shall be booked under the penal law so that the free, fair and transparent exercise of Special Revision can be done in the state of Assam.” Police confirmed that the complaint was received at the Dispur station, but said that an FIR has not been registered.
Taking this further, in its memorandum to the ECI, the Raijor Dal has asked that the Special Revision be stopped altogether and that an inquiry be conducted into the BJP meeting held on January 4, as well as an audit of applications for objections to inclusions filed across Assam in the last three months.
Unlike states such as West Bengal and Rajasthan, Assam is not undergoing a Special Intensive Revision (SIR), but a Special Revision, because of its unique position of having conducted a National Register of Citizens (NRC) process, which is pending completion.
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The key component of the Special Revision process in Assam was house-to-house visits by Booth Level Officers (BLOs) to conduct physical verification of the existing voter lists. However, unlike the SIR, the Special Revision process does not involve document verification.
Based on this, a draft electoral roll was released on December 27, and the claims and objections process is ongoing and will continue till January 22.
