The Election Commission wrote a letter to Akhilesh Yadav and asked him to furnish by 10 November, assembly-wise details of the deletion of voters and complaints filed by the Samajwadi Party to the district and state election authority in this regard.
The commission also told Yadav that it has not received any complaint from the Samajwadi Party regarding the deletion of 20,000 voters from the electoral rolls of any constituency and the election authorities of districts and the state of Uttar Pradesh have also not flagged any such complaints to them.
One candidate of the Samajwadi Party from the Aligang assembly constituency has complained about the deletion of around 10,000 voters from electoral rolls in his constituency and the Chief Electoral Officer of Uttar Pradesh conducted an inquiry based on that complaint.
After a detailed inquiry, the Chief Electoral Officer found the allegations to be "baseless, unsubstantiated and factually incorrect".
The Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) laid by the Election Commission of India leaves no scope for the deletion of voters from electoral rolls and the legal provisions for the preparations of electoral rolls also do not allow it. During an election year, suo-moto deletion of names from electoral rolls is strictly prohibited.
The Election Commission also assured that every deletion from electoral rolls is conducted after following the due procedure of law and adequate opportunity is also provided to the person concerned.
Uttar Pradesh went for assembly elections in February- March this year with Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) returning to power in the state with an absolute majority of 273 seats while Akhilesh Yadav-led Samajwadi Party (SP) remained in opposition with 125 seats.
With inputs from PTI
