Akhilesh Yadav targets BJP for defending ECI amid ‘vote dacoity’ allegations
Lucknow, September 27: The Samajwadi Party (SP) national president and former Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav has accused the Election Commission of alleged irregularities in the voter list. He targeted the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for coming to the Election Commission’s defense.
He alleged that during the elections, attempts were made to delete the votes of SP supporters and Form-07 was used extensively for this. Akhilesh claimed that the Election Commission and officials colluded to deliberately delete the names of SP supporters from the voter list in the 2022 assembly elections. The SP had raised the complaint of deletion of votes from the voter list even after the elections.
Attacking the BJP government over its development work, Akhilesh cited the example of Saifai. He said that if the government had taken inspiration from Saifai, Gorakhpur too could have become a model of development. He quipped that boats are now operating where the metro is supposed to run. The SP president said, “What can you expect from people who can steal from temples and steal offerings?”
Akhilesh Yadav was addressing reporters at a press conference at the party headquarters on Sunday. He further said that the SP was unaware of such a process during the 2017 assembly elections. The party was confident that the Election Commission conducted elections in a free, fair, and transparent manner, but subsequent events dented this confidence.
He claimed that the SP failed to form a government in 2022 due to alleged irregularities by the Election Commission.
The SP president alleged that people associated with the BJP went from village to village and collected applications for voter deletion. He said that attempts were made to remove voters’ names by filing a large number of Form-07s. Akhilesh claimed that in Lucknow, one person filed Form-07s to remove the names of more than 100 voters, while according to him, a person can file such an application for a maximum of five voters.
Akhilesh also reacted sharply to Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath’s alleged statement in favor of the Election Commission. He said, “If the Chief Minister is speaking in favor of the Election Commission, it means the Chief Minister himself is involved in the scam and the entire BJP is involved in the scam.”
Referring to the party’s preparations for the upcoming assembly elections, Akhilesh said that issues related to sports and sports infrastructure will be prominently included in the SP’s election manifesto. He assured athletes that there will be no manipulation in sports. If the party forms the government, emphasis will be placed on providing athletes with better facilities, training, and the necessary infrastructure for sports.
The SP chief said that if the SP forms the government, the Yash Bharti Award will be increased to 2.1 million rupees. He also talked about increasing the monthly honorarium given to honorees to 100,000 rupees.
