Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav alleged voter list fraud on Monday, targeting the Election Commission before his Supreme Court march. He claimed many people had multiple entries in voter lists. Yadav said, "The Election Commission is acting at the behest of the BJP." He demanded answers regarding these serious irregularities.
Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav on Monday alleged that the Election Commission was "acting at the behest of the BJP" and claimed that many people had multiple entries in the voter list. He made the remarks before leaving for Delhi to take part in a march to the Supreme Court to submit a petition on alleged "vote chori" and against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar.
Questioning the Special Intensive Revision, Yadav said the exercise had failed to fix problems in the voter lists despite the time and money spent on it. He said the issue had made the opposition's protest against the SIR and the CEC necessary.
Speaking to reporters at the Chaudhary Charan Singh International Airport in Lucknow, Yadav said, "The Election Commission is acting at the behest of the BJP. The BJP gets a vote registered for whosoever it chooses. If you are a BJP member, the Election Commission will register you as a voter. If you are a BJP member, you are considered an Indian citizen. If you are not a BJP member, you are not considered an Indian citizen."
He claimed that one voter in the Azamgarh assembly constituency in Uttar Pradesh was mentioned 10 times in the voter list. "If this claim is incorrect, let the Election Commission and the BJP prove us wrong. There are 10 votes for a single individual in the Azamgarh assembly constituency. What should we understand about this SIR exercise? One individual will cast one vote, while the BJP will cast the remaining nine, because the BJP knows it has made 10 votes for that person," Yadav said.
Yadav also claimed that the name of Adityavardhan Srivastava of Gorakhpur appeared twice in the voter list and that the name of Shambhu Shankar Sharma appeared four times in the voter list of the Gorakhpur Urban constituency. He further said that Nagma Rabbani's name appeared six times in the voter list, while Praveen Yadav's name appeared three times.
Questioning the need for the SIR, Yadav asked why the Election Commission had been unable to "rectify" the voter lists despite "spending crores of rupees" on such a "massive exercise" that had taken up "so much time of officials and political leaders". Referring to the opposition protest, he said, "It is because of this that the agitation is necessary."
In sum, Yadav alleged irregularities in the voter list, cited multiple entries in Azamgarh and Gorakhpur, and said these issues were behind the opposition's march to the Supreme Court and its protest against the SIR and the Chief Election Commissioner.