At the time of the 2020 polls, there were 1.48 lakh voters in Kejriwal’s New Delhi constituency. By October 2024 that figure had dropped by 42,000, and then thousands more applications were submitted
NEW DELHI — Close on the heels of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s allegations of large-scale manipulation of electoral rolls, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Friday levelled sensational charges against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Election Commission (EC), accusing them of colluding to delete names of thousands of its supporters ahead of the 2025 Delhi Assembly elections.
At a press conference in the capital, AAP’s Delhi state president Saurabh Bharadwaj said the party had collected “concrete documentary evidence” showing how applications were fraudulently filed to strike genuine voters off the rolls in key constituencies, including former chief minister and party supremo Arvind Kejriwal’s New Delhi seat.
“Citizens stood in line to vote believing they were choosing a government of their will, but governments were being formed at the whims and fancies of a few,” Bharadwaj alleged. “This is a systematic and organised loot of democracy.”
Bharadwaj cited a letter dated January 5, 2025, written by then Delhi Chief Minister Atishi to Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar, which detailed a surge of 6,166 voter deletion applications filed in Kejriwal’s constituency over just 15–20 days.
The party presented data from the same period: between October 29 and December 15, 2024, 2,776 deletion applications were filed, followed by hundreds more daily through late December. “At the time of the 2020 polls, there were 1.48 lakh voters in the constituency. By October 2024 that figure had dropped by 42,000, and then thousands more applications were submitted,” he said.
AAP also shared examples of alleged impersonation. Bharadwaj cited cases where multiple deletion requests were filed in the names of residents such as Tarun Kumar Chautala, Usha Devi, Sunita Devi and others — none of whom, he claimed, had sought to remove their names.
According to AAP, complaints filed by Atishi and Kejriwal in early January 2025, seeking criminal investigations, were acknowledged by the EC but never acted upon. Bharadwaj said RTI queries revealed that the poll panel closed the file without forwarding it to investigative agencies or initiating any inquiry.
“A chief minister gave a written complaint with names and addresses, but the EC says it’s ‘personal information’ and refuses to disclose who examined it,” he said, calling the stance “shameful.”
He also criticised the current Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, saying successive CECs had “looked the other way.”
The AAP leader dismissed the EC’s quick rebuttal to Rahul Gandhi’s claims about online deletion of votes. “Form-7 for deletions is available online even today,” Bharadwaj said, questioning the commission’s explanation that an officer must approve deletions and hence “online deletion is not possible.”
“The EC is behaving like a social media troll, giving fodder to the BJP’s troll army instead of probing the fraud,” he added.
Bharadwaj announced that AAP would publish its evidence on social media and WhatsApp groups. “The silence of the Election Commission only proves the conspiracy,” he said, vowing to keep raising the issue.
The Election Commission has not yet issued a formal response to AAP’s latest allegations. The BJP too has so far refrained from commenting.
The controversy comes amid an escalating political storm over electoral roll manipulation, with the Congress on Thursday presenting what it called proof of “vote theft” through mass deletion and addition of voters’ names in several states in a systematic and centralized manner. The poll body dismissed Congress charges as “baseless and incorrect.”
