Top News

Bhubaneswar: Mass deletion of Muslim voters continues nationwide, with Odisha being the latest Bharatiya Janata Party-led state to employ its party agents to “illegally” file deletion requests.

The Reporters Collective on Sunday, August 30, reported that in the Bhadrak assembly constituency, BJP’s booth-level agents have been filing en masse, requesting the district administration to review several hundred Muslim voters amid the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls in the state.

The targeted attempt was confirmed after The Collective reviewed the digitally filled forms submitted by the BJP across various booths in the constituency.

The BJP won the constituency in the most recent election by 16,068 votes, while the Biju Janata Dal (BJD) won it the time before that by 33,389 votes.

30 Muslim-majority booths targeted

The booth-level officers interviewed claimed that at least 30 booths were targeted and that they all had more than 90 per cent Muslim voters.

Although filing fake or wrongful applications for deletion of voters is illegal, the report found that the district administration in many cases accepted the requests and even ordered BLOs working under the Election Commission of India to verify the Muslim voters.

These booth-level party agents are individually and collectively filing several deletion requests through Form 7, which voters can use to request the removal of a voter from the electoral roll.

Omar Usam (name changed), the head BLO in Bhadrak, said that after the completion of the first enrolment phase of SIR in July, the district administrations summoned more than 30 booth-level officers. They were handed 100-200 forms each and asked to verify voters, whom Usam claimed were Muslims.

BLOs forced to review false Form 7s

The BJP agents, however, said the BLOs had flagged these voters during the door-to-door enumeration and verification drive. Usam said the BLOs had initially refused to review the Form 7 requests. The district sub-collector insisted the BLOs review the documents and give a report to the district election office.

“My BLOs did not want to accept these claims because they were false. They had themselves verified these voters mere days ago. But district election officials insisted that additional verification be conducted on the names that were red-flagged.”

Usam himself was not spared from the targeting, as his family, including his two sons and daughter, was flagged for deletion by the saffron party. Usam said he oversees ten booths, and among them, a total of 1,150 voters were targeted.

BLO handbook thrown out the window

The BLO handbook given by the ECI states that a BLO must hold a verification exercise when a Form 7 is submitted; then the officers are asked to forward the complaints to the district election administration ot the Electoral Roll Officer (ERO) of the constituency. This rule only applies if the complaint was filed without violating the presiding laws.

In Bhadrak, multiple complaints were sent to district election offices, bypassing BLOs entirely, in clear violation of the handbook. The BLOs were in turn forced to review the documents despite many officers claiming they were incorrect.

Usam’s report submitted to officials and reviewed by The Collective shows that all the voters flagged were Muslims, and all of them were legitimate.

The mass complaints filed by the BJP were also found to be systematic and computer-generated, as the details required to be filled by hand were already printed.

Five first information reports (FIRs) have since been filed with the Superintendent of Police (SP) in Bhadrak against two individuals. Two of these voters alleged they are being subjected to illegal attempts to remove them from the electoral rolls.

Opposition calls it a systematic attempt

The Opposition parties have termed it a “systematic and well-planned” attempt to “falsely” remove Muslims from Muslim-majority booths.

The Biju Janata Dal (BJD) filed a complaint with local officials in Bhadrak about requests to remove many Muslim voters from the rolls. The party also said the Form 7 complaints were prepared on a computer and not by hand.

Odisha is among the 19 states and union territories undergoing the final phase of SIR and not the only state where Muslim voters are being targeted for removal from the list.