After first raising the issue last week, the Aam Aadmi Party on Wednesday (December 11) met the Election Commission (EC) to bring to its notice what it termed was the BJP’s “conspiracy” to delete 11,018 electors from the rolls of the Shahdara Assembly constituency.
With Assembly elections due in the national capital in February 2025, the AAP sought the EC’s intervention to “preserve the integrity of the electoral process”. Here is all you need to know about the matter.
What is the AAP’s allegation?
Former Delhi Chief Minister and AAP national convener Arvind Kejriwal on December 6 addressed a press conference in which he claimed that the BJP was trying to have electors deleted from areas that have been AAP strongholds. He said the BJP’s booth level agents had submitted applications of 11,018 electors to be deleted from the rolls in Shahdara on the pretext that they had shifted out, passed away, or were duplicate entries. He said the party carried out verification of the BJP’s claims of 500 such electors, and found that 372 of them were still living at their listed addresses.
On Wednesday, an AAP delegation, including Kejriwal and Delhi Chief Minister Atishi, met the EC to reiterate the charge and seek action. In his letter to Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar on Wednesday, Kejriwal wrote that the BJP had submitted the applications in the past six weeks and the Electoral Registration Officer (ERO) concerned had issued an order on November 22 for taking action on the BJP’s submissions. He alleged that the lists submitted by the BJP were being processed without being uploaded on the Chief Electoral Officer’s website, which is a requirement. Citing the party’s own verification, he said 75% of the 11,000 electors could be genuine, meaning that 8,200 such electors could be struck off the rolls in a constituency that the AAP won with a margin of 5,294 votes in 2020.
Kejriwal asked for the forms submitted by the BLA concerned to be rejected, and an FIR to be filed against the person. He said most of the applications submitted by the BJP pertained to electors who live in slums.
What is the procedure for deleting electors off the rolls?
After an amendment to the Representation of the People Act, 1950, in 2021, the Election Commission has been revising the electoral rolls four times a year — with January 1, April 1, July 1 and October 1 as the qualifying dates. Before that, the rolls were revised once a year with January 1 as the qualifying date across the country, and further revisions were done ahead of Lok Sabha and Assembly elections in the country or state concerned.
Any Indian citizen who is 18 years or older in age, and is an ordinary resident of the area concerned can fill out Form 6 prescribed by the EC to register as a new elector. If a registered elector has shifted or wants to make a correction, they can fill Form 8 to carry out the changes.
As a part of the revision exercise, the ERO publishes the draft roll and invites claims and objections and correction applications in a specified time period. The application for objecting to a proposed inclusion or seeking deletion of an existing entry from the roll is through Form 7. The Registration of Electors Rules, 1960 states that only those electors who are enrolled in a particular constituency can submit a Form 7 seeking deletion of another entry.
Form 7 gives the applicant the following options for objecting to a person’s inclusion on the rolls — death, under age, absent or permanently shifted, already enrolled and not an Indian citizen. An elector who has shifted or the family members of those who have passed away can also submit a Form 7 to delete their names.
The EC’s Manual on Electoral Rolls published in March 2023 states that no bulk applications for inclusion and claims/objections would be entertained. The EC, however, does allow the Booth Level Agents of political parties to submit up to 10 applications per day and not more than 30 during the entire period of the summary revision.
What has the EC said?
While the EC is yet to publicly comment on the allegations, EC sources say that 11,018 electors have not been deleted in Shahdara. They added that 494 Form 7s had been published on the CEO website.
“Only 494 form 7 has been received in Shahdara Assembly constituency since 29 October, 2024. Hence, the claim that 11,018 form 7 were filed by BJP in the last one month is factually incorrect,” the Shahdara District Magistrate, who is the District Election Officer, said in a post on X on December 6 in response to the allegations.
As per the EC’s instructions, the draft electoral roll for Delhi was published on October 29 and the period for filing claims and objections was October 29 to November 28. The claims and objections are to be disposed of by December 24 and the final roll is to be published on January 6, 2025.
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