The Aam Aadmi Party chief Arvind Kejriwal today accused the BJP President Amit Shah of harassing its call centre employees after the Delhi Police commenced the action on the Election Commission of India’s request to take “requisite action” against those making ‘misleading’ phone calls to people about Delhi’s electoral roll.
Delhi CM and AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal held Amit Shah responsible for the action initiated by the Delhi Police against the call centres employed by AAP. The Delhi Police had lodged an FIR on February 10 after several residents of Delhi complained of receiving misleading calls telling them that their names have been struck off the electoral list.
प्रधान मंत्री जी, आपकी ये अपील झूठी है। आपके लोग लाखों लोगों के वोट कटवा कर उन्हें वोट करने से रोक रहे हैं। हमने उन लोगों के वोट बनवाए तो आपका अमित शाह हमारे कॉल सेंटर बंद करने की धमकी दे रहा है। अपने अमित शाह और अपनी दिल्ली पुलिस को रोकिए। और या फिर ये झूठी अपील बंद कीजिए https://t.co/ytHvXYtBuy
— Arvind Kejriwal (@ArvindKejriwal) March 13, 2019
In a series of tweets, AAP leader Raghav Chadha lashed out at the BJP, accusing it of deleting 30 lakh voters in Delhi. He asserted that AAP went door to door and found large-scale deletions of voter names in the list. Chadha further insinuated that since BJP’s manoeuvres have been exposed they are harassing call centre employees with the help of Delhi Police. Senior AAP leaders Atishi and Chadha yesterday met Delhi Police to register their protest against ‘unwarranted’ harassment of their call centre workers.
However, a senior police official has claimed that they were simply acting on the FIR lodged by the Election Commission and had questioned the call centre employees regarding the nature of calls allegedly made by them to the Delhi votaries. As reported earlier, AAP call centre has been making phone calls to people in Delhi the telling them that BJP has deleted their names from the voter list, and Arvind Kejriwal was restoring their names. Several people have reported receiving such calls, and some of them posted recordings of the calls on social media also.
After people raised objections on the misleading calls they received, the Chief Electoral Officer of Delhi had requested the Delhi police to investigate the phone calls that many people in Delhi have been receiving telling that their name has been struck off from the voter list. In a letter written to the Delhi Police Commissioner on February 2, Election Officer Manoj Kumar said that they have various written complaints in this regard, and prima facie it appears that the matter needs to be thoroughly investigated.
Many people who were registered in voter list of different states also received the calls alleging that their names have been deleted in Delhi’s electoral list. Some of the citizens who received the calls verified the claims made and found that their names still exist on the voter list and therefore the phone calls were false. The callers who made these ‘misleading’ calls had identified themselves as being associated with the AAP party.
