PIONEEREDGE NEWS SERVICE | Dehradun
Senior leader of the Congress party and the member of the Congress Working Committee Gurdeep Sappal has accused that the Bharatiya Janata Party in collusion with the Election Commission are engaged in systematic theft of votes by selective addition and deletion of names of the people in the voter list.
Interacting with the media at Rajiv Bhawan here on Thursday, Sappal said that the investigation by the Congress party has proved that an institutional conspiracy is underway to take democracy hostage.
He said that when the Congress submitted a complaint of the scam to the Election Commission, it started questioning the complainants instead of conducting an investigation. Sappal said that the EC is acting as a puppet of the ruling party.
He said that the Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) also organised a ‘ Mera Vote- Mera Adhikar ‘ campaign in all the 99 urban local bodies. Sappal said the party met the people whose names were deleted from the voter lists and filed more than 2500 applications under the RTI act. He claimed that the State Election Commission has responded to only 136 RTIs and these responses too are unclear.
Sappal said that deletion of names from the voter list involves submitting a form VII by the individual and the people whose names were deleted had asked from the SEC, the name of the person who had fraudulently submitted this form. Similarly, the commission claims that it sends a speed post to the person concerned whose name is getting and a report of the booth level officer (BLO) is also needed for deleting the names from the voter list. Sappal said that the people whose names were removed had asked for all these three documents (Form VII, BLO report and unique ID of the speed post) from the commission but it has not provided any detail.
PCC president Karan Mahara said that the party has found that in the Kedarnath by-election names of 4,800 people were removed while 8,000 were added between the Lok Sabha elections and the by-election. He said that the party will now expose the theft of votes done by the BJP in the Kedarnath by-election.
Congress leaders Abhinav Thapar, Pankaj Chhetri and Prem Baukhandi also accompanied Sappal in the Press conference.
