Voter list UP: Yogi Adityanath claims 1.27 million Hindu voters missing after SIR exercise as Muslim voters grow by 1.65% | Today’s news
Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has said that 1.27 million Hindu voters are missing from the state’s draft electoral rolls, becoming the first BJP chief minister to question the Special Intensive Review (SIR) conducted by the Election Commission of India.
However, when asked if this was proof that there were irregularities in the SIR exercise, the UP CM dismissed the claims as “propaganda”.
Adityanath made these comments during an event organized by Hindi news channel Aaj Tak.
Adityanath also claimed that now that so many Hindu voters have been wiped out, Akhilesh Yadav will not demand the abolition of SIR.
“Ask Akhilesh Yadav to demand cancellation of SIR now. He won’t because Muslim voters increased by 1.65% in UP after SIR. And I was talking about the plight of Hindu voters,” Adityanath said at the event, according to The New Indian Express.
“That’s why we handed over a memorandum to the Election Commission asking why this happened,” the UP CM said at the event.
“I am talking about those 1.27 crore Hindu voters who have their names on the voter list in UP panchayat polls but their names do not exist in the ECI voter list,” he added.
Adityanath claimed that among the 66 lakh voters in the state whose names were on the panchayat voter list but not on the draft voter lists, 55 lakh are Hindus.
He also said that 4.5 million voters in the age group of 18-29 are also missing from the electoral rolls.
How did he know that, asks Akhilesh
Following Adityanath’s comments, Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav asked how the UP CM came to know about the number of Hindu voters struck off the electoral rolls.
Speaking at the party’s Lucknow party office, SP Yadav said, “The Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, who kept the entire nation in a state of fear by constantly raising the issue of infiltrators, now claims that the names of 1.27 million Hindu voters have been struck out,” according to a PTI report, adding, “The question arises: How do they know that all the names of Hindu voters were shared with the Election Chief?” They will show it to the public and political parties later, but first to the CM’s office,” said the former CM.
In a separate post, X Yadav made some demands regarding the election:
“Aadhaar cards should be linked to voting”; “Instead of paper or plastic, ‘metal cards’ should be made so they cannot be counterfeited”; and “Biometric identification based on fingerprint or iris should be adopted as no two people have the same biometrics so BJP will not be able to rig the vote.”
