Targeted voter deletions in UP's Farrukhabad: Did it help BJP secure the seat?

This is the second part of our investigation into discrepancies in voter lists. Read the previous piece here.Months before the BJP won Farrukhabad Lok Sabha seat with a margin of around 2,700 votes, more than 32,000 voters were struck off the lists. And the largest rate of deletions was in Aliganj, an assembly constituency with the highest share of Yadav and Muslim voters who form 30 percent of its electorate. Within Aliganj’s 395 booths, 53 had an unusually higher rate of deletion, including 37 that were populated by Muslim, Yadav, Shakya, and Jatav voters. Our ground visits, conversations with field staff and senior officials, and a review of voter lists further reveal how a BJP MLA’s letter seemed to have influenced deletions..In January, 277 voters were removed from four booths in Aliganj. This was within two weeks of Aliganj BJP MLA Satyapal Singh Rathore writing to the district administration expressing concern about “bogus voters”. All of these booths housed voters only from the Yadav, Shakya, Jatav, and Muslim communities. All these deletions were suo motu, unlike the general process for deletions, where objections can be filed by anyone against anybody through form 7. In suo motu cases, poll staff can unilaterally delete voters after filling out form 7 and carrying out a verification. But Standard Operating Procedures laid down by the Election Commission of India in September 2021 do not permit suo motu deletions six months before an election, except in “special circumstances” with the “commission’s approval”.Additionally, when Newslaundry conducted a door-to-door survey in the booths mentioned in the MLA’s letter, at least 20 voters did not even meet the criteria for deletion – such as death or shifted address. When we went to the addresses of many others who were deleted, we either found the house locked or those people not at home.In any case of deletion, especially in areas where deletions make up 2 percent or more of the voter list, a voter has to be given a chance to present his version before a deletion, except in case of death. But voters who spoke to Newslaundry denied receiving any such notice. Poll officials said these notices were sent but locals could not understand them as they were in “English”.***Locating a deleted voter is simple – one just has to visit the address mentioned in the voter list.In the Nagla Ballabh village, 40 km away from Farrukhabad city, Yadavs are the majority and own large tracts of land used to farm crops like potato, corn and bajra. At the entrance of this village is the home of Shikha, a 27-year-old Yadav voter whose name was struck off the list citing shifting of residence. But Shikha did not even know that this was the reason she was denied to vote in the Lok Sabha elections.“On the polling day, the officers told me it is because I am underage. I asked how this was possible since I had voted in the 2022 assembly polls. I showed them my Aadhaar…but they were not convinced,” she said. Shikha showed us her Aadhaar card to point out her age. When asked if she had received a notice from the district election office before her name was taken off the list, she said no.In the neighbouring village of Dadupur Khurd, word had spread meanwhile about a reporter from Delhi verifying deleted voters. At first, Sukhdev Kumar thought that “polling officials” had come to “return” his vote. The 26-year-old from the Jatav community is an agricultural labourer. He left work in the field and met Newslaundry in Dadupur Khurd after “borrowing a friend’s bike”. “I learnt that my vote has been deleted on the polling day. I did not even know when it got cut. I could not understand how it was possible because I had voted in the previous assembly elections,” he claimed.When Newslaundry reached Nagla Kamle village in Jaithra block, about an hour’s drive away, villagers huddled together under a banyan tree. “How did you find out that many voters were deleted here?” asked Surjit Yadav, a Samajwadi Party worker. When this reporter showed them the voter list and mentioned the first deleted voter – called Radheshree – to confirm if she was dead, the villagers chuckled. We eventually found 61-year-old Radheshree at her home. As she opened the blue-painted door to her thatched house, Radheshree was more concerned about whether the deletion meant that she was also removed as a beneficiary of the ration scheme. Three houses away, Newslaundry found another voter, 52-year-old Satyapal, living at the same address as the one mentioned in his voter identity card. Asked about his deletion citing a shifted address, he joked, “I am not much of a traveller.” We also met 62-year-old Trimohan Singh, who was declared dead in the voter list in the same village. But he was not comfortable being photographed for this story. Based on testimonies from voters like these, the Election Commission’s manual on electoral rolls for deletions seems to have been violated in several instances. According to the EC manual, whether it’s suo motu strike-offs or general deletions, an opportunity must be given to the voter – who is proposed to be deleted – to represent their case after a showcause notice. This gains even higher significance when the removal is happening in an area with a deletion rate larger than 2 percent, with the requirement of cross-verification by the electoral registration officer. But all the deleted voters Newslaundry met said they were never given a showcause notice or a chance to make their case.Two booth-level officers, who are in charge of preparing electoral rolls, told Newslaundry that they had worked under “immense pressure” for deletions after the MLA’s letter on “bogus voters”. Other BLOs alleged that BJP MLA Rathore regularly sends such letters for deletions. Rathore told Newslaundry that he does regularly send such letters. UP CEO Navdeep Rinwa denied allegations of wrongful deletions. When we asked him about the BLOs’ claim about working under pressure after the BJP MLA’s letter, he said they “might tell you anything but we have not received any complaints”.“Though as an Election Commission, we are bound to take actions based on complaints by any political party. In fact, in another constituency, we took actions based on the Samajwadi Party’s request,” he added.In the Lok Sabha constituency of Farrukhabad, the BJP’s Mukesh Rajput had defeated Samajwadi Party’s Naval Kishore Shakya with a razor thin margin of 2,678 votes. After the election, SP chief Akhilesh Yadav alleged that district administrations, including that of Farrukhabad, made the party’s candidates lose several seats. Congress’ Jairam Ramesh too criticised the BJP for pressuring administration officials.While opposition parties keep referring to alleged EVM discrepancies, dozens of villagers in every village Newslaundry travelled to expressed more concern about deletion of voters with little awareness of the norms surrounding the revision of voter lists. And the Samajwadi Party is trying to tap into this discontent. In October, at the inauguration of a jewellery shop in Aliganj city, Naval Kishore Shakya mentioned voter deletion while addressing a crowd of hundreds. “I have already challenged the verdict on this seat in Allahabad High Court,” he said. “Soon, we will also find out how many of us lost their right to vote. Baba Saheb has given us the right to vote. We will not let anyone snatch it from us.” The three booths and their trendsNewslaundry had decided to zero down on three booths that had the highest deletion rates across Farrukhabad, ranging from 5 percent to 12 percent — much higher than the Election Commission of India’s caution limit of 2 percent. These included booth 208, which has OBC voters from Yadav and Shakya castes, and saw the removal of 12 percent or 105 votes; booth 140, which also contained Yadav and Shakya castes, and saw the removal of 9 percent (68 voters); and booth 193, which had Muslim and Dalit voters and saw a 9.5 percent deletion (102 voters). Of these, booth 208 and booth 140 were part of MLA Rathore’s letter.Newslaundry spent a few days in villages – Dadupur Khurd, Nagla Ballabh, Kiledaran, Ram Prasad Gaur, Nagla Jalim, Nagla Girdhar, Nagla Phoolsahay, Nagla Kamle – housing voters from these booths, which saw a total of 275 deletions citing death, address change or duplicate entry. But during our door-to-door survey, at least 43 such voters – or over 15 percent of the total – claimed to have wrongly been deleted. Three of these were shown dead while 40 others were said to have changed their address. But they were actually living at the same address, and claimed that they had neither applied for any change of address nor for a shift to another roll. They also said they never received a notice.The vote-share by different parties at these booths is interesting, taking the 2022 assembly election results as the latest point of reference. For example, the highest rate of deletion came from booth number 208 from where 12 percent of the votes were struck off. Here in the 2022 assembly elections, the Samjawadi Party bagged 426 votes, followed by 181 by BJP, 5 by Bahujan Samaj Party and 2 by Congress. At four other booths where deletion percentage was over 9 percent, the BJP bagged three times less votes than the SP and BSP combined in the last assembly polls. The BJP received 508 votes against SP’s 1,368 and BSP’s 386.Overall, the BJP got 3,798 votes less than the SP at 53 booths that saw the highest deletion rates in Aliganj. However, the BJP retained the assembly seat by a thin margin of 3,810 votes in the 2022 polls.. It will require an EC inquiry to find out whether these trends hold for all the other booths that saw a high rate of deletions, and whether they could be the same for all other elections.SY Quraishi, former chief election commissioner, called such removals “political” given the caste composition of the voters. While another former election commissioner, who wishes to remain anonymous, said these high rates were “shocking”.The BLOs ‘under pressure’Yogendra Kumar, a BLO at booth 139, and Shikha Yadav, BLO at 208, said that on the voting day, they had realised that “a couple” of voters were wrongly deleted though they insisted there weren’t many instances like this. The BLO from booth 140 refused to comment.Yadav said that after the elections, she filed an application to register them as voters again. However, she claimed that the deletions in four booths mentioned in the Aliganj MLA’s letter had happened under “immense pressure” with district officials holding “meetings late at night”. “The district administration used to call for meetings at odd hours like 10 pm. Being a woman, it was really tough for me to attend these meetings. So, I had to take my husband along. We were also threatened that if we would not act on the BJP MLA’s complaint then our salaries would be deducted. After this incident, I feel like giving up the job of a BLO,” she claimed.Kumar agreed with Shikha. “The district administration acted with immense urgency after the MLA’s letter.”Sachin Gupta, BLO at 193, could not meet us because of his tight schedule. Manoj Kumar, a BLO at booth 86, alleged that MLA Rathore would regularly send letters for deletions. “We receive such letters regularly, with lists of people whose names they want to be deleted. Most times, these lists have wrong names.BLO Yogendra Kumar agreed. “In fact, he [MLA Rathore’ has assigned this task [deletions] to one of his associates,” he alleged.Rathore also agreed to regularly sending letters. “It is because in the past, when the Samajwadi Party was in power, they had got a lot of fake voters registered on these booths.”Pradeep Tripathi, the former Etah SDM who was the electoral registration officer in Aliganj when these deletions happened, said, “We had formed a committee based on the MLA’s letter. And a proper report was submitted to ensure that we have taken action.”Asked if similar committees were formed based on complaints by all political parties, he said all norms are followed.Asked about these deletions, Etah SDM and Farrukhabad ERO Jagmohan Gupta said, “I joined after the first list was published. So I do not know.” He told us to talk to UP’s chief electoral officer Navdeep Rinwa. Newslaundry has submitted details of all these cases to the CEO. The missing and the notices ‘in English’At her home in Ram Prasad village, Noorjahan, 69, was shocked to learn that she had been declared dead. “This election, I was wondering why I had not received my voter information slip.”Rahman Abdullah Khan’s three sons – Shohraz Khan (45), Shoaib Khan (47), and Mohammad Rihan Khan (47) – were removed from the rolls saying that they had moved out of the house. “All of them have been living in the house since they were born. Cutting three votes from our family is a big number. That’s why they could not even cast their vote this time,” said Rahman.Similarly, 55-year-old Fakra Begum also questioned the deletion of her vote on the pretext of shifting house. “I have been living in this house for more than three decades. There is no question of moving.”The vote of 39-year-old Rani Devi was deleted while her husband Sugriv Kumar is still on the electoral list. Ram Beti, a 60-year-old Jatav voter who has about two acres of land in Dadupur Khurd village, claimed that eight of her family members were taken off the rolls before the 2022 assembly polls. “Now, my family is left with only three registered voters. After eight of us were denied to vote on polling day, we never tried to register ourselves again. Because what’s the point when they can get deleted like this before elections again?”According to the second edition of the EC’s manual on electoral rolls published in March last year, voters are given a chance to reclaim their votes after the deletion. Once a notice is sent to inform them of the deletion, the voter can challenge it by visiting the voter registration centre in the district. The ERO has to subsequently hold a hearing and then take a decision.In the notice informing the voter about the deletion of their vote, it is also communicated that they can challenge their deletion in a hearing before the ERO on a particular date. If the voter responds with an objection, the ERO conducts a hearing and disposes of form 7. If the voter skips a hearing, the authorities proceed with deletion.ERO Gupta denied the allegations about notices not being sent to voters. “The notices were sent but when people did not turn up, we struck them off the list.” However, he claimed that a major issue with these notices is that they are sent in English, which most of the population cannot understand. “Their language should be Hindi or depending on the state. So you should ask why the Election Commission has been sending these notices in English. This is for them to check.”In response to Newslaundry’s questionnaire, the Election Commission of India referred us to Uttar Pradesh’s Chief Electoral Officer.CEO UP Navdeep Rinwa agreed that the notices are sent in English. Asked if he has ever received complaints from voters, he replied, “This is the format across India. And usually in villages, whenever people receive notices from the government, they put in effort to ask around what is it about.”Meanwhile, BLO Shikha Yadav said the notices were sent to “at least some of the houses. But because they were in English, voters could not comprehend it, leaving them the opportunity to challenge their deletion.”In the next part of this series, over 27 percent bogus voters in some Meerut booths and a ‘pro-BJP’ turnout trend.This report was originally published in Newslaundry and can be accessed here.