Lucknow, Nov. 28 -- Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav has urged all Opposition parties, as well as allies of the NDA, to join hands and expose what he called a conspiracy by the BJP to strike names off voter lists. He warned that those currently supporting the BJP would be the first to face political elimination.
In a statement issued on Friday, Yadav alleged that the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of voter rolls is being misused to cut votes on a large scale. "This is cheating with democracy. Today names are being removed from the voter list. Tomorrow names will be removed from land papers, ration cards, caste certificates and reservations. Then they will go after bank accounts and the lockers of the middle class," he said.
Yadav appealed to citizens to prioritise resisting what he called the "SIR fraud," saying the move is part of a bigger plan worse than the era of colonial rule.
He further alleged that district magistrates, additional district magistrates, sub divisional magistrates and supervisors are putting pressure on BLOs to mark eligible voters under the third option while submitting the counting forms. According to Yadav, this will result in many voters being flagged for verification when the draft roll is published on December 9, leading to the deletion of names in the final list to be released on February 7.
The SP chief demanded that the publication of the draft voter list on December 9 be postponed by at least three months and that the form submission process be restarted in accordance with rules to avoid large scale deletion of names.
Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Millennium Post.