Concern over the ongoing special revision (SR) of electoral rolls in poll-bound Assam among Opposition parties continued to mount, with the Congress on Friday lodging a complaint with the police in Kamrup district against “miscreants allegedly linked with the BJP” for allegedly “indulging in large-scale vote manipulation” in the Boko–Chaygaon Assembly constituency.
An Assam PCC statement said the police complaint has named, among others, “Zila Parishad member and South Kamrup district BJP general secretary Prahlad Biswas; South Kamrup district BJP secretary and BJP ticket aspirant from the Boko–Chaygaon constituency Mrinmoy Boro; South Kamrup district BJP ST Morcha secretary Buddheshwar Rabha; and employees of Boko Nandini Gas Agency, Mridul Talukdar and Dipak Rabha”.
The complaint was lodged by Tuleshwar Rabha, president of the Boko Block Congress Committee, on Friday afternoon, a PCC member told The Telegraph.
“According to the complaint, at around 8:30pm on January 22, taking advantage of darkness, the accused entered the Election Branch of the Boko Sub-Divisional Office and clandestinely deleted names from the electoral roll while also adding new names using computers. This act of murdering democracy was witnessed by local journalists and members of the public,” the Assam PCC statement said.
Before the filing of the complaint, Raijor Dal president, Akhil Gogoi, uploaded a 5.31-minute video on his Facebook, showing several persons inside a room with computers handling Form 7. Gogoi claimed in his post that BJP members were allegedly carrying out voter list-related work in the Boko sub-divisional office around 8.30pm on Thursday. He claimed they were deleting voters’ names.
An official in the Assam CEO’s office told this newspaper that he had “informed concerned authorities to examine the case and... clarify”.
Seeking a proper investigation into the alleged deletion and inclusion of voters “carried out through Form 7 on the Election Commission of India’s portal by Prahlad Biswas, Mrinmoy Boro, Buddheshwar Rabha, Mridul Talukdar and Dipak Rabha, along with certain election officials”, the party has also “demanded the immediate arrest of those involved and exemplary punishment for the offenders”.
On Thursday, leader of the Opposition Debabrata Saikia wrote to chief election commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, flagging alleged irregularities in the ongoing SR, which started in November, including attempts to “exclude legitimate voters from the electoral process” during the claims and objections process, which ended on
Thursday.