Prove ‘mass deletion’ of voters from roll: EC to Akhilesh

Yadav had accused the EC of deleting the names of Muslim and Yadav votes in UP

The Election Commission has asked the Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav to submit documentary proof to substantiate his allegation that the poll panel had deliberately struck out about 20,000 voters of the Yadav and Muslim community in almost all the 403 Assembly constituencies in Uttar Pradesh.

The EC has written to the SP chief, asking him to furnish proof to the poll panel by November 10. It asked him to submit proofs showing the numbers and names of the voters, who, according to him, were wrongfully deleted from the electoral rolls. It also asked him to provide evidence and documents for all electors who had been deleted wrongfully.

Yadav, who had been elected to be the SP president for the third term last month, had accused the EC of “deleting” the names of Muslim and Yadav votes in every Assembly constituency of Uttar Pradesh at the behest of the BJP. He had also been quoted demanding a probe into the wrongful deletion of voters.

The commission stated that the SP chief’s statement regarding the alleged mass deletion of names, that too, of a particular group of voters from the Electoral Roll, was extremely serious and had far-reaching substantive implications on the integrity of elections and thereby on democracy.

The poll-panel asked Yadav to submit the details of any specific complaint filed by his party about deletions of voters of such magnitude either with any of the District Electoral Officers or the Chief Electoral Officer of Uttar Pradesh during the process of special summary revision of electoral roll or during the general elections to legislative assembly of the state.