Lucknow (Uttar Pradesh) [India], April 11 : Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MP Sanjay Singh hit out at the Election Commission of India over allegedly large discrepancies in the final voter list following the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) drive in Uttar Pradesh.
Speaking to ANI, he flagged a "massive discrepancy" between the previous voter lists of Panchayat and assembly elections, which were prepared by the same officials.
"The lists for the Panchayat elections were prepared by the employees of Uttar Pradesh themselves - and these are the very same people who had also prepared the lists for the Assembly elections. In light of this, how can there be such a massive discrepancy between these two lists? The question is: Was the opposition targeted, and were their votes removed?" said Sanjay Singh.
Meanwhile, the revised electoral roll published on April 10 includes a total of 133,984,792 voters in Uttar Pradesh, with 73,071,061 male voters and 60,909,525 female voters. This was an increase of 84,28,767 voters, from the earlier draft electoral roll, which was published on January 6, and had included 125,556,025 voter names.
Apart from this, there are a total of 2.22 crore logical discrepancies, followed by 1.04 crore non-matching voters. The SIR in Uttar Pradesh comes at a time when assembly elections in the state are set to take place next year.
Earlier in February, the Election Commission of India (ECI) extended the period for filing claims and objections in the SIR of electoral rolls in Uttar Pradesh until March 3. The decision came in response to a request from the state's Chief Electoral Officer to allow additional time for citizens to submit their inputs.
The procedure has also drawn criticism from the opposition, with Samajwadi Party (SP) MP Akhilesh Yadav accusing the BJP of trying to create fake votes in Uttar Pradesh, following the deletion of 2.89 crore names from the draft electoral rolls during the SIR. He urged people to check their names to ensure their votes are not affected.
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