Akhilesh Yadav accuses Election Commission of deleting Samajwadi Party votes

Akhilesh Yadav alleged that the Election Commission and officials had worked together to delete votes belonging to the Samajwadi Party.

NEW DELHI: Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav has again trained his guns at the Election Commission. Reviving his allegations about the conduct of the 2022 Uttar Pradesh assembly elections, he said the votes of SP supporters were deliberately deleted. His latest attack comes amid the ongoing controversy over the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls. Akhilesh said that the alleged malpractice was not new. He said it had been taking place for years and has only been exposed now. "This malpractice has been going on all along; the only difference now is that it has been exposed," he said. The SP chief also went back to the 2022 election. He alleged that the Election Commission and officials had worked together to delete votes belonging to the Samajwadi Party. He said, "We didn't pay enough attention in 2017. We trusted and believed that the Election Commission would be impartial and would not compromise its credibility." He added that his concerns became clear after the 2022 Assembly election results, saying, "When the results came out in 2022, I remember stating at our national convention that the Election Commission and officials had colluded to deliberately delete the votes of the Samajwadi Party."

Akhilesh further alleged that people who had voted in the 2019 elections were subsequently prevented from voting in 2022. "Those who had voted in 2019 were denied the opportunity to vote in 2022—without notice and without adherence to any rules or laws—and the result was that a Samajwadi government was not formed in 2022," he said. His latest remarks come against the backdrop of the continuing political row over the Election Commission's SIR exercise after a report by Indian Express revealed objections raised by two of the three election commissioners for the revision. Opposition parties have since raised concerns over the revision of electoral rolls and the possibility of eligible voters being left out.