CPI(ML) says it ‘physically verified' wrongful deletions in Bihar draft voter roll

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2 days ago

The Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation on Saturday said that its workers had physically verified wrongful deletion of voters in some Assembly constituencies of Bihar amid the contentious exercise to revise the state's electoral rolls.
The party is part of Bihar's Opposition alliance, which includes the Rashtriya Janata Dal and the Congress.
Two complaints that the party filed amid its verification exercise relate to the deletion of voters in villages that are predominantly Yadav, The Wire reported. The community is considered to be the support base of the former Deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Yadav-led Rashtriya Janata Dal.
The Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation also found several voters from Dalit communities having been removed from the draft roll, according to The Wire.
The special intensive revision of the electoral rolls in Bihar was announced by the Election Commission in June. As part of the exercise, persons whose names were not in the 2003 voter list needed to submit proof of eligibility to vote.
The draft roll was published on August 1 ahead of the Bihar polls expected to take place in October or November. It showed that more than 65 lakh names had been deleted from the list.
The list will be revised by September after the Election Commission assesses objections and claims about the exclusion and inclusion of voters in the draft roll.
On Saturday, the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation cited a complaint filed by Amit Kumar Paswan in booth number 152 (old) and 173 (new) in the Bahadurpur constituency as having alleged that the names of some voters in the Bandh Basti village had been deleted despite the persons being present there.
Fifty-nine of the 818 voters in a booth were deleted from the draft roll. The names were removed 'without giving any reasons either to the people or to the BLAs [booth level agents]', the party alleged.
The booth-level agents are appointed by political parties.
'Out of these 59 people, CPI(ML) teams on the ground have identified 20 such people living in the same booth, whose presence has been physically verified,' the party said.
It claimed that two persons whose names were deleted – Motilal Yadav and Dhyani Yadav – were in the 2003 voter list.
'These people, whose names have been deleted, are being forced by ECI officials to get their names included in the draft by filling Form 6, which is meant for new voters,' the party said on social media.
The Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation said it has been raising the matter of persons whose names have been removed from the draft roll being forced to submit a new registration form, 'leaving no mechanism to file complaints' and allowing the Election Commission to claim that there have been zero complaints filed.
The party demanded that the poll panel release the names of voters who had been removed from the draft roll, specifying the reason for the deletion in every panchayat.
On Saturday, the Election Commission told the Supreme Court that it is not required under the rules to publish a list of persons excluded from Bihar's draft electoral roll. In an affidavit, the poll panel said that the rules do not require it to explain why a person's name is missing from the draft roll.
The submission was made in response to a petition by the non-profit organisation Association for Democratic Reforms, which had sought a court directive for the poll panel to explain the reasons for deleting 65 lakh names from the draft electoral roll.
Claims about objections
While the Election Commission claimed that it has not yet received objections and claims from political parties pertaining to names having been wrongfully excluded or included from the draft roll, party workers have said that they have filed several complaints, The Hindu reported.
According to the Election Commission, while it had received more than 8,300 claims from individual voters as of Sunday, there had been none from 1.6 lakh booth-level agents.
But more than 46,500 Form 6 applications had been filed, the poll panel said.
The newspaper quoted party workers as saying that when they flag the deletion of names of eligible voters through complaints, the electoral registration officers tell them to ask the voters to submit Form 6.