Sangh Parivar

A Head of the Assembly elections in Delhi, likely to be held in
November this year, some politicians are leaving no stone unturned to
ensure their victory, albeit through foul means. Though, with the
changing time and technology it has almost become impossible to capture
the booth or adopt other illegal means during the polling, some of the
politicians are burning the midnight oil to find loopholes in the
existing system. It came to light with the sudden surface of over 10
lakh bogus voters requesting inclusion of their names in the voters
list. Surprisingly, these 10 lakh voters surfaced only within last
three weeks of June.

The scam involving some politicians was unearthed by the
Election Commission itself. On the complaints of Chief Electoral
Officer Satinder Silas Bedi, Delhi Police registered 100 FIRs against
bogus voters and more cases are likely to be registered in coming days.

A total of 40 lakh additional names were added to the
electoral rolls in June this year. But the election officials became
suspicious of about 30 per cent of them during a month-long
door-to-door verification as part of the electoral roll preparation in
sync with new Assembly constituencies being re-drawn after the
de-limitation order. “The electoral roll reviewed in March had 1.2
crore people listed. Another 40 lakh were added after that. But when we
began to investigate, we found that around 10 lakh applications were
incomplete and did not have the requisite documents,” Smt. Bedi said.

According to the Election Commission, a large number of bogus
applications were received from Outer Delhi assembly constituencies
including Nangloi Jat, Madipur, Burari, Okhla, Samaypur Badli,
Sultanpur Majra, Kirari, Mundka, Gokalpuri and Patel Nagar. “The
investigating teams visited nearly 19,000 households in Patel Nagar in
West Delhi, and they could verify merely 19 people with correct
information,” Smt Bedi pointed out.

The overall verification process is still on with area
booth-level officers carrying out the door-to-door verification
process. The officers will tabulate the data by July 31. A draft
electoral list will be published on August 1. All clarifications and
objections could be filed by August 16. The final electoral roll will
be completed on September 15.

The names of these 10 lakh bogus voters have been included in
the voters lists on the basis of forged ration cards. The Food and
Civil Supplies Minister of Delhi, Harun Yusuf admitted at a press
conference that a total of 1,70,598 bogus ration cards have been issued
in Delhi. They include 11,256 under Antyodaya Yojna category, 17,364
under BPL category and 1,41,978 under APL category. According to
sources, the actual number of bogus ration cards in Delhi are over two
lakh. This is also a fact that over 95 per cent of the fair price shops
and kerosene depots in Delhi are owned by influential political people
close to the Congress party and these people played a key role in
making these bogus ration cards. The preliminary investigation by the
Food Department reveals that most of the fake ration cards have been
detected from Mangol Puri constituency represented by the PWD Minister
Rajkumar Chauhan.

While the Congress is still silent on the unearthing of the
scam, the BJP Delhi unit demanded removal of the names of all bogus
voters from the electoral rolls. Delhi BJP chief Dr Harsh Vardhan
alleged that the Congress is exerting pressure on the election office
to go slow on its inquiries into bogus voter ID forms. The BJP also
demanded that the interferences of Congress ministers, legislators,
councillors and other leaders in the work of the rectification of the
electoral rolls should be stopped immediately. Apart from deleting the
names of all bogus voters, the BJP also demanded to remove the names of
illegal Bangladeshi citizens who have enrolled themselves as voters.

“Congress has always resorted to dirty tricks of enrolling
bogus voters because it is well aware that its defeat is imminent. So
the Congress is adopting the tactics of enrolling bogus voters to avoid
the crushing defeat. Keeping in view this fact, the schedule for
Assembly elections should be announced only after a full enquiry into
the matter and rectifying the voters lists,” Dr Harsh Vardhan demanded.

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