AAP alleges illegal voter deletions during UP SIR

Lucknow: As the special intensive revision (SIR) initiated by the election commission (EC) in various states, including UP, entered its last leg, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) ramped up its efforts to ensure that no names were deleted illegally during the exercise. Accusing BJP of using this exercise to delete names of those who do not support it, AAP MP Sanjay Singh said there were plans to delete names of at least two crore voters and manipulate elections. The party issued a list of booth level agents (BLAs) who are working actively in Muslim, Yadav and other OBC-dominated areas, where the party fears the most deletions will take place.The party's state spokesperson, Sarvesh Mishra said that to draw attention to this issue and to create awareness among people, the party will take out a padyatra from Dec 21-26 in west UP. The party also raised suspicion on a recently launched drive by the UP govt to weed out infiltrators and keep them in temporary detention centres.Singh, who also raised the issue in the ongoing winter session of Parliament, said, "Recently, the Lucknow mayor went to a location where people from Assam have been living for years and working as waste pickers. They have all necessary documents, despite which their carts were taken away. In another case, an FIR was filed against a woman who filled up the SIR form for her two sons, on charges that they were residents of Kuwait. These episodes are being reported all across the state, and we are taking up each one of them with the EC to get justice".Giving the example of the SIR in Bihar, Singh questioned how many "infiltrators" the govt managed to identify. Singh also questioned CM Yogi Adityanath's recent announcement that infiltrators in Uttar Pradesh will be identified and thrown out.