The Aam Aadmi Party and Bharatiya Janata Party on Sunday accused each other of manipulating the Delhi electoral roll ahead of the Assembly elections in the capital, reported The Hindu.

Aam Aadmi Party chief Arvind Kejriwal said the BJP was trying to secure an unfair advantage in the upcoming polls, which are expected by February.

“Today, I want to present some data from my New Delhi assembly constituency,” Kejriwal said at a press conference. “BJP’s ‘Operation Lotus’ began in this constituency on December 15. In just 15 days, they submitted nearly 5,000 applications for vote deletions and 7,500 applications for new additions.”

Operation Lotus is a term used to refer to the BJP’s alleged attempts to target or orchestrate defections in Opposition parties.

The former chief minister said that after verifying 500 out of the BJP’s 5,000 deletion applications, it was found that 408 of the voters had lived at their addresses for at least 20 years. He argued that deleting legitimate voters’ names effectively strips them of citizenship.

Kejriwal also claimed that 47 votes had been added in one house and 22 in another, but both houses were found to be non-existent, suggesting a clear case of fraud.

He alleged that the BJP attempted to delete 5% of voters and add 7.5% new voters in the New Delhi constituency, which has 1.06 lakh eligible voters.

“This would amount to tampering with 12% of the votes,” the Aam Aadmi Party chief said. “If 12% of the votes are manipulated, there’s no point in holding elections as the process loses all fairness. This is a blatant and brazen act of misconduct.”

“Tactics they have reportedly employed during Maharashtra and Haryana elections, we will not let those tactics succeed in Delhi,” Kejriwal said.

He warned Delhi government officials against engaging in illegal activities, adding that while governments may change, files and signatures would remain as evidence, leading to serious consequences.

Aam Aadmi Party leader and MP Sanjay Singh, meanwhile, accused the Hindutva party of filing applications to remove his wife Anita Singh’s name from the voter list.

“Not once, but twice, on the 24th and 26th of December,” Singh said. “Anita Singh, my wife, originally hails from Jaunpur in Purvanchal. Since I raised issues concerning Purvanchalis and people from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, they decided to retaliate by targeting her.”

In response, the BJP’s Delhi unit chief Virendra Sachdeva accused the Aam Aadmi Party of manipulating the electoral roll and said that his party would not allow bogus votes to be cast in Delhi.

Sachdeva said his party had provided several pieces of evidence to the Election Commission and accused Kejriwal of attempting to cover up his “wrongdoings” by sowing confusion among the electorate.

“In Narela alone, over 2,000 people applied for new voter registrations on December 24,” Sachdeva claimed. “Similar applications have been observed in various constituencies on December 25, 26, and 27. This is not mere coincidence but evidence of Arvind Kejriwal’s manipulation plan affecting 70 constituencies.”

Sachdeva alleged that the applications did not, in fact, come from new voters aged 18 to 20 but from citizens 30 to 48 years old.

“I want to ask Arvind Kejriwal: Where did these voters…suddenly appear from during the Assembly election?” he asked. “Who brought them, and what is their background? The BJP has sent a complaint to the Election Commission yesterday and will be submitting another complaint today.”

Updating electoral roll is ongoing process: EC

In response to the allegations raised by the Aam Aadmi Party, the Election Commission said on Sunday that updating electoral rolls is a continuous process, which is currently underway.

The Delhi chief electoral officer said that the draft voter roll was published on October 29 and objections to it were disposed of by December 24.

“The Special Summary Revision with respect to the qualifying date, January 1, 2025, is being done as per the Election Commission’s letter dated August 7, 2024,” the chief electoral officer said on X.

Booth-level officers make door-to-door visits to verify the electoral rolls during the exercise.

“During the pre-revision period, that is from August 20, 2024 to October 18, 2024, the BLOs [booth-level officers] conducted a house-to-house verification to identify the unenrolled eligible citizens and prospective electors, permanently shifted electors/dead electors/ multiple entries,” the statement said.

The chief electoral officer also said that “the final electoral roll with respect to the qualifying date, January 1, 2025, will be published on January 6, 2025”.

The statement added: “However, the process of continuous updation w.r.t [with respect to] addition, deletion and modification is a continuous activity and same is undergoing now.”