Guwahati, Feb 11: Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Wednesday claimed that the names of lakhs of “doubtful voters” were deleted during the Special Revision (SR) of electoral rolls in the state.
He said many of the deletions were based on complaints filed by BJP workers.
His comment comes a day after the Election Commission had published the final voters’ list for poll-bound Assam with over 2.43 lakh names deleted from the draft rolls.
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“This is only the beginning. Names of more such people will be deleted when the Special Intensive Revision is conducted,” Sarma said at a press conference here.
“As far as possible, our party members filed complaints. Names have been struck off based on these,” he said.
Sarma claimed that for the first time since the signing of the Assam Accord, such a large number of names have been removed from the rolls.
“Some people tried to threaten us, frighten us. But we went ahead and succeeded. Our BJP workers could convince booth-level officers that people against whom complaints were lodged were not residents anymore. We worked a lot,” he added.
Sarma also said, “The war against illegal Bangladeshi Muslim (immigrants) will continue.”
At the end of claims and objections, the final electoral rolls was published on Tuesday with a total of 2.49 crore voters, a decrease by 0.97 per cent from the draft list.
The CM had earlier indicated that only ‘Miyas’ were being served notices during the SR process as a tactic to “keep them under pressure”, and said that more than 5 lakh complaints were filed by BJP workers against “illegal Bangladeshis”.
‘Miya’ is originally a pejorative term used for Bengali-speaking Muslims in Assam and the non-Bengali speaking people generally identify them as Bangladeshi immigrants. In recent years, activists from the community have started adopting this term as a gesture of defiance.
The SR exercise had stirred much controversy in the state, with opposition parties alleging that it was being used for “vote theft” and genuine citizens, particularly of a religious minority community, were being harassed during the process. (PTI)
