NEW DELHI: The Congress launched a scathing attack on the BJP government in Rajasthan, stating that a deliberate attempt is being made to fraudulently delete names of Opposition supporters from electoral rolls under the pretext of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR). The party said nearly 45 lakh voters have been categorised as ASD (Absent, Shifted, Deceased), and demanded a forensic investigation into the forms being used to remove voters.
Addressing a press conference in Delhi, Rajasthan Congress chief Govind Singh Dotasra said the process was smooth until January 3, when BJP leader B.L. Santosh visited Rajasthan and held meetings. He said fraudulent additions and deletions surged thereafter, escalating further after visits by senior leaders like Amit Shah.
Citing Election Commission data, Dotasra said that between December 17 and January 14, BJP’s 937 booth-level agents (BLAs) submitted applications to add 211 names and delete 5,694, while Congress’s 110 BLAs added 185 and deleted only two.
“In Rajasthan, this is not SIR. This is CVR, Congress Voter Removal,” Dotasra said, adding that the BJP was “murdering democracy” and carrying out “vote theft” in the name of electoral revision.
He said that in many constituencies, especially those where the Congress had won by narrow margins of 1,000–2,000 votes, 10,000 to 15,000 pre-printed forms were being circulated to seek deletions. “BJP MLAs, ministers and candidates are submitting thousands of forms to SDMs with forged signatures of BLOs. Many BLOs have gone on record saying they never signed these forms and that the signatures are fake,” he said.
Dotasra said that by January 15, the BJP had already managed to get around 1.4 lakh deletion requests registered. He also said that officers were being threatened to accept the forms or lose your job.” He questioned the justification for deletions after voters were mapped to the 2002 list and criticised BJP claims of removing “Bangladeshis and Rohingyas.”
Dotasra demanded that the India’s Election Commission and the Supreme Court order a forensic investigation into the forms to determine where they were printed and who distributed them.
The Congress said it would not allow what it called a “sinister conspiracy” to succeed and warned that if such practices continued, “there will be no need left to even hold elections.” The party also said it would move court over the issue.
