Akhilesh Yadav gives 'evidence' of voter list tampering to EC, state poll authority

Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav on Thursday submitted evidence as asked by the Election Commission to substantiate his allegations that names of his party’s supporters had been removed from the voters' list on a large scale in the last UP assembly elections.

The former UP chief minister sent the evidence through email along with proof of the names of Samajwadi Party supporters that were allegedly removed from the voters' list, a party release issued here said.

The SP chief has also sent the photocopies of complaints made to the Chief Electoral Officer, Lucknow, and Chief Election Commissioner, New Delhi, in this connection, including the compilation of media reports, the release said.

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Yadav also said in the email that despite a demand having been made to investigate the matter by activists, supporters, and people from across districts, and media reports being published about them, no probe was done.

According to party spokesman Rajendra Chaudhary, Yadav has also demanded the inclusion of a representative of the SP in the investigation.

Last month, the Election Commission had asked Akhilesh Yadav to substantiate his allegation of mass deletion of voters’ names from Yadav and Muslim communities in the election held earlier this year.

In a letter to Yadav, the Commission had asked him to submit by November 10 assembly-wise evidence of the wrongful deletions and complaints filed by the SP with the district and state electoral authorities.

Yadav had first made the list tampering allegations during a party meeting in September.

It is learnt that the Commission had told Yadav that it had not received any complaint about deletion of names of 20,000 voters from the electoral rolls of any constituency.

The Commission had also said that its district and state electoral officers had not flagged any such issue.

The poll authority said that one SP candidate had complained about deletion of names of 10,000 voters from the electoral rolls in Aliganj assembly constituency.

The Commission said that although on enquiry, the Chief Electoral Officer of Uttar Pradesh had then found the allegation "baseless, unsubstantiated and factually incorrect."