Jammu,April 26 – J&K BJP State Secretary & Incharge Kashmir Province S. Charanjit Singh Khalsa and BJP Migrant Cell Convenor Hira Lal Chatta, on Sunday, charged the Election Commission of India (ECI) and the Chief Electoral Officer, Jammu and Kashmir, for deleting the names of thousands of voters of Kashmiri migrants from the voter lists of the valley and introducing M Form and Postal Form, which has turned the migrant voters as Second Class voters in their own country. They said that Election Commission provides the voter lists to the candidates after filing M forms just 24 hours before the polling starts, which is violation of the fundamental right of the contesting candidate.
while addressing a press conference at Jammu today The BJP leaders questioned the Election Commission of India as to why no action has been taken despite repeated representations to the Chief Electoral officer at Jammu and the Chief Election Commission at Delhi regarding irregularities in voter lists of Kashmiri migrants from valley.
Elaborating further, the BJP leaders informed that in 1996 assembly election, there were 1.47 lakhs of Kashmiri migrant votes while 97 thousands votes were polled whereas in 2002 the KP voters deceased and the number came down to 1.17 lakhs and despite of being boycott call of Hurriyat Conference 40 thousand votes of KPs were polled. They further said that in 2008 the number of Kashmiri migrant votes again decreased upto 71000 out of which 17000 votes had been polled.
They explained that the reason behind the decrease in migrant votes is M-form which puts hurdles for the Kashmir Pandits in their democratic right to vote.
Citing an example, H L Chatta said that during 2008 assembly polls, there were 400 Kashmiri Pandit votes in Chanam village of Baramulla but in the list prepared for 2009 parliamentary election only 16 names are there in the voter list which reflects that names of KP votes have been deleted deliberately for which Election Commission and Government is responsible as they both have failed to check the same.
Alleging that National Conference and Congress too was responsible of militancy and exodus of Kashmiri Pandits from Valley, Chatta said that now NC and Congress again responsible for curbing the right of Kashmiri Pandits by getting their names deleted from the voter list. Alleging misuse of funds liberated from the Centre for the Kashmiri Pandits and refugees by the state governments, the BJP leaders demanded inquiry into alleged misuse of funds.
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