BJP chief is using police to target workers: AAP to EC

Delhi Police has been harassing AAP leaders, call centres [working with AAP], and party workers at the behest of BJP. They are trying to infleunce Delhi voters... SANJAY SINGH’S LETTER TO EC

NEW DELHI: Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Wednesday trained his guns on Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) national president Amit Shah, accusing him of using Delhi Police against his Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in connection with the controversial voter deletion issue in the national capital.

The issue related to the AAP alleging that many voters were deleted from Delhi’s electoral rolls.

While the BJP contested these claims, the chief electoral officer’s office had said there was an increase of 7.78% in voter enrolment from the 2014 general elections.but it had also said the number of voters had decreased by 1,19,575 compared to the electoral rolls published a year ago (January 10, 2018). On Wednesday afternoon, AAP leader Sanjay Singh, who is also a Rajya Sabha member, posted a letter on Twitter addressed to the chief election commissioner. “Delhi Police has been harassing AAP leaders, call centres [working with AAP], and party workers at the behest of BJP. They are trying to influence Delhi voters with this,” he wrote.

Kejriwal retweeted Singh’s post adding: “Amit Shah has stooped to hooliganism. Delhi Police has been threatening to shut down our call centres on the behest of Amit Shah. The votes of lakhs of individuals who are alive have been deleted. We got them enrolled again. What is the crime in that? And if you have to arrest someone, arrest us. Why are you [Delhi Police] threatening the call centres?”

Adding to Kejriwal’s comments, deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia later issued a press statement in which he said: “The Gujarat model [referring to Shah] is not going to work here. This is Delhi where only democracy works.”

In the evening, Sanjay Singh, along with few other AAP leaders protested outside the Crime Branch office in southeast Delhi, which is in the same building as the Sunlight Colony police station. He asked police to arrest him and also posted a video about the same from the premises of the police station on Twitter.

Police did not arrest or detain him.

“We had to deploy adequate personnel for security arrangement but eventually no gathering happened,” said Chinmoy Biswal, Deputy Commissioner of Police (South East).