Cong, BJP allege ‘misuse’ of official machinery for West bypoll, admn denies

Even as the much-hyped bypoll to the Ludhiana West Assembly seat has not yet been announced, the politics has started heating up with opposition parties alleging “misuse” of official machinery to “favour” the ruling AAP.

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The Ludhiana West Assembly constituency had fallen vacant following the mysterious death of AAP’s MLA Gurpreet Bassi Gogi on January 10 night. As per rules, the bypoll to elect a new MLA from the vacant seat has to be held within six months.

While the AAP had on February 26 formally announced Rajya Sabha MP Sanjeev Arora candidate for the bypoll, no other party has come out with Arora’s opponent yet.

However, the main Opposition Congress and the Centre’s ruling BJP have opened separate fronts against the ruling dispensation, accusing it of “misusing” its civil and police machinery to “favour” the AAP nominee.

Flatly refuting all such accusations, DC Himanshu Jain has assured free, fair, and transparent conduct of the bypoll as per the laid down norms of the Election Commission (EC).

While Congress state working president Bharat Bhushan Ashu has shot off a formal complaint to the EC alleging “manipulation” of the electoral rolls, BJP state general secretary Anil Sarin has given a call to gherao the CP tomorrow, alleging that party’s booth-level activists were being “threatened” by the police.

In a complaint to the ECI, Ashu alleged that the AAP government had started the “dubious” process of deleting the names of genuine voters from the voters’ lists “summarily and arbitrarily” without giving any chance to the voters concerned.

He enclosed a voice recording of ADC Rupinder Pal in which he claimed that the officer was heard “giving instructions” to booth level officers (BLOs) to fill the Form 7 for deleting the names of genuine voters from the voters’ lists.

Claiming that most of BLOs have refused to do so, the former Congress minister, who had lost the 2022 Assembly poll from the Ludhiana West to AAP’s Gogi, alleged: “It is learnt that the administration has now been using their BLOs’ IDs to summarily delete voters’ names.”

Ashu alleged that the administration on the instructions of the AAP government was making fresh votes. “It is being apparently done to neutralise the impact of deleting a massive number of voters,” he said while apprehending that the government aims at registering thousands of fake voters.

He said to ensure that the number of voters does not shoot up substantially, the ruling party was trying to first delete the voters’ names and then add fresh ones, which obviously it wants to manipulate later.

The senior Congress leader urged the Commission that if and when any bulk addition of names in the voters’ list was done, it may be thoroughly cross-checked to prevent unauthorised addition in the voters’ list, which he accused the AAP government of keen to do. He also sought strict action against erring officials.

On the other hand, Sarin alleged that police officials were calling their booth-level leaders and asking them to share the lists of their members.

“We will not tolerate such high-handedness of the police and will not let anyone to threaten our leaders or influence the voters,” Sarin asserted, adding that party leaders would gherao the CP office tomorrow to lodge their protest and if required, similar protests would also be staged across the state in days to come.

Expressing ignorance over the Congress’ complaint, the DC said, “No such matter or complaint has been brought to my notice but I assure that the bypoll will be conducted in a fair and transparent manner as.”

However, CP Swapan Sharma remained incommunicado despite repeated calls and messages.