Bengaluru, February 26, 2023 (PPI-OT):Names of 9,159 Muslim voters in the Shivajinagar constituency in Indian city Bengaluru have been removed from the voters’ list. This removal is done based on a complaint filed by a BJP-linked private agency named Chilume on November 16, 2022 and the action was taken by the Election commission in January 2023. It is reported that the private agency, Chilume prepared a list of 26,000 voters after collecting the data illegally since October 2022 for the Shivajinagar constituency.

The Election Commission published the final electoral roll for the Shivajinagar constituency on January 15, 2023. This is when the BJP private agency swung into action with its voters list some eight days after the electoral roll was published. The private agency of the BJP went to the Election Commission demanding that the 26,000 names mentioned in the EC list should be removed. The EC officials removed 9,159 by claiming that they had either shifted out of their old home addresses or were dead. However, media reports say the names that were deleted were all wrong and it was verified with those who received the notices found them to be alive and living at the same old addresses.

Congress MLA Rizwan Arshad has reportedly said, “Voters are getting harassed. Many people replied to the first notice, despite that they have been issued a second notice asking them to appear before the EC. This process is to tire people out, I don’t know why Shivajinagar was chosen for this experiment. Maybe because this is a safe seat for the Congress, the BJP wants to see if deletion can help them win the election.” Further, the MLA asked, “how a private group can do door-to-door electoral roll calls and create a voter list of its own is something that is a mystery? The alarming part is the quick response of the election commission to such a complaint.

The move is being seen as a violation of Election Commission rules issued on September 13, 2021, that says no deletion to the electoral rolls can be done six months prior to the end of the term of the Assembly. (Karnataka assembly term ends in the last week of May). Shivajinagar, which is in the heart of Bengaluru, has around 1.91 lakh voters, 40% of whom are Muslims. The constituency has been represented by a Congress MLA since 2008.

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