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Bogus cry turns out to be bogus

By Sujay Mehdudia

NEW DELHI SEPT. 22. The Delhi unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party has been caught on the wrong foot this time. An internal verification by the Election Commission in several constituencies of the Capital has revealed that fake votes' allegations were not true and were just being trumped up by the party for political gains.

In fact, the move is being seen as an attempt by the BJP to get the names of genuine voters -- specially those who are not its traditional voters -- deleted from the electoral rolls in the run-up to the Delhi Assembly elections later this year. The BJP and its senior leader, Vijay Kumar Malhotra, had launched a tirade against the Election Commission, particularly the Chief Election Commissioner, J.M. Lyngdoh, alleging bias against the party. It was alleged that a verification of the rolls done by the party had detected more than one lakh fake votes and the Commission did nothing on the issue.

The Delhi BJP had also written to the Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, seeking his intervention. But all that has turned out to be wrong. In fact, it is understood that the Elections Commission has written to the senior BJP leader and former Transport Minister, Rajinder Gupta, that the details provided by him about bogus votes were found to be "baseless''.

Mr. Gupta had submitted a bundle of files containing list of thousands of what he alleged were bogus voters. When the Election Commission sent its team to do a personal verification (randomly selected), it was found that majority of them were genuine registered voters. The Commission intimated this to Mr. Gupta recently.

Not only this, when Mr. Gupta and other BJP leaders were asked by the Commission to sign on the list of alleged bogus voters provided by them but they refused.

It is learnt that the BJP leader, with the consent of the party, had employed an obscure computer firm to carry out the verification. The firm, without any expertise for this kind of job, had been supplying data to the BJP and its leadership by just scrutinising the rolls name wise and the same was being forwarded to the Election Commission with the allegation that these were bogus votes.

The verification carried out by the Election Commission has revealed that a majority of the complaints of the BJP verified time and again had revealed a pattern to get the names of people who were ordinary residents of that area deleted from the electoral rolls. "Perhaps, the BJP was feeling a bit uncomfortable with a certain category of voters and their names were being selectively chosen in an effort to get them deleted from the electoral rolls,'' a senior Election Commission official remarked.

It is understood that the Election Commission has also questioned the method of scrutiny adopted by the BJP, which was faulty and not reliable.

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