Delhi BJP chief slams AAP lies on SIR notice to Kejriwal

New Delhi, Sep 20 (IANS) Delhi BJP President Harsh Malhotra said on Sunday that AAP leader Saurabh Bharadwaj misled Delhi voters with the SIR notice issued by the ECI to the family of his party colleague and former Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal.

Malhotra said that under the SIR system, in the first phase, only those voters whose names can be mapped with the 2002 Delhi electoral roll can remain on the Delhi voters’ list.

He said the entire world knows that before 2013, Arvind Kejriwal's family was a voter in Ghaziabad district; therefore, his mapping in Delhi is not possible.

“Today, Saurabh Bharadwaj held a press conference in his dramatic style and said that if questions are being raised over the vote of such a highly educated three-time Chief Minister, then what will happen to the common man?” said the Delhi BJP chief.

He said it would be better for Saurabh Bharadwaj to understand that whether it is Arvind Kejriwal or any ordinary citizen, mapping under Delhi SIR will be possible only if that person was a voter in Delhi in 2002.

The process of getting a new voter registered in Delhi is now open. Whether it is Arvind Kejriwal’s family or any ordinary citizen, everyone can get their vote registered, provided they first get their name deleted from the place where they are already registered as a voter. Every person can register their vote at only one place in the country, Malhotra said.

Earlier, the Election Commission of India on Sunday sought to counter misinformation on social media about SIR-related notices being sent to Delhi voters and clarified that issuing notices does not mean electors’ names will be deleted from the electoral rolls.

The Commission clarified in a statement that system-generated notices are being issued to some categories of voters to correct their data in ECINET.

“No name can be deleted without giving an opportunity of being heard and a proper speaking and appealable order. Therefore, there is no existential crisis as is being brought out in Social and Print Media,” the Election Commission of India (ECI) said in a statement.

The ECI said it is issuing notices only to two categories of voters whose names appear in the Draft Electoral Rolls.

These two categories are those who could not be linked with the electoral roll of the last Intensive revision and those with logical discrepancies in their linking with the electoral roll of the last Intensive revision, the ECI said.

The ECI said that upon receipt of notices, these electors may submit reply/requisite documents to the ERO/BLO concerned.

--IANS

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