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A Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) delegation led by State unit president Babu Lal Marandi on Wednesday, July 24 met with the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC), Rajiv Kumar in the national capital New Delhi and submitted a detailed report linked to the deletion of voter’s name in bordering constituencies of Jharkhand.
The delegation comprised senior BJP leaders including Leader of Opposition in Jharkhand State Assembly, Amar Kumar Bauri, Rajya Sabha Member of Parliament (MP), Pradip Verma, State general secretary and MP, Aditya Prasad Sahu and Rajmahal’s MLA, Anant Ojha meet with the ECI and submitted a memorandum, informed Marandi.
Through the memorandum submitted, the opposition leaders of the State have demanded a thorough inquiry into the unprecedented rise of voters from the Muslim community on polling booths of various areas of Jharkhand alongside the decrease of voters at Hindu-dominated polling booths.
This comes on the heels of party leaders submitting a memorandum to Chief Electoral Officer, Jharkhand on July 16 seeking an inquiry into the unprecedented growth of voters and rapid change in demography in separate pockets of the State.
Earlier, the party MLA from Rajmahal, a bordering constituency of the State adjoining West Bengal had also submitted a letter to the Chief Electoral Officer of Jharkhand raising concern over the rapid growth in the voters in the constituency.
Interacting with the media after meeting the CEC, Marandi quoted “We complain that in a few areas of Jharkhand where the Muslim population is dominant, in those areas there is unexpected growth in the number of voters in the electoral roll – fake voters from 20% to 123% have been added in electoral rolls. It’s wrong. If demography changes like this, it will be a danger to democracy, we all need to feel this danger. We have asked the Election Commission to conduct an intensive review and investigation into this matter.”
Marandi further alleged that an unprecedented rise of voters has been registered in assembly constituencies like Rajmahal, Barhet, Madhupur, Sarath, Majhgaon and other, especially in those dominated by Muslim community while a decline has been witnessed where the Hindu voters are significant in numbers.
Deletion of voter’s name in specific pockets
It is worth mentioning here that earlier the Rajmahal MLA, Anant Ojha had also raised concern over the deletion of thousands of voter’s names in his constituency after the recently concluded Lok Sabha polls.
Ojha had alleged that names of around 18000 voters of Rajmahal assembly seat have been missing from the list depriving them to exercise their voting rights. According to Ojha, those who couldn’t vote in the Lok Sabha polls were voters of BJP.
One of the most affected areas where scores of people were deprived from the voting rights due to deletion of their names in the list is Tinpahad area, a traditional stronghold of the BJP. According to the BJP’s block president of Tinpahad names of around 2000 voters of 60 polling booths have been missing from the list indicating a larger ploy behind.
Notably, this is not the only time that the issue of inaccurate voter list has popped up in the region and similar charges of inaccuracy in voter list had led to deletion of around 7000 names from the voter list in 1990, mostly of intruders.
Ojha alleged that the demography of the Santhal division is changing rapidly given the large number of infiltration from Bangladeshi Nationals who often enters in matrimonial alliance with local tribal girls leading to de-facto occupation of the land of the latter.
ECI seeks reports from DC’s
Meanwhile the ECI has now soughed a report from the DC’s of respected districts into the matter. According to the reports, the Chief Electoral Officer of Jharkhand, Ravi Kumar has passed instruction to the concerned officials to conduct an inquiry into the matter and submit a report.
We have written a letter to the concerned officials to conduct a thorough inquiry on the specific booths as per the manual of the ECI, an inquiry is being conducted into the matter, we had also dispatched a special team in this regard, written reports are yet to be filed by the DC’s, informed Kumar.
Read more at: Will the “illegal Bangladeshi infiltration” issue dominate the upcoming assembly polls in tribal pockets of Jharkhand?
Change in demography in Santhal region
It is worth mentioning here that the Santhal region which encompasses the eastern districts of the State adjoining to a few districts of West Bengal which shares its border with Bangladesh on the other side has witnessed a rapid change in the demography over the years.
Recently in a letter to the Chief Minister Hemant Soren, the BJP state unit president Marandi while seeking a Special Investigation Team inquiry into the matter has pointed out the significant change in the demography that has occurred in the region since independence.
In the letter Marandi while quoting the figures of the consecutive censuses carried out by the government has highlighted that the percentage of the tribal population has witnessed a sharp decline in the region which now stand at around 28 per cent, a sharp fall from 44 per cent which was the percentage of the tribal population at the time of independence.
At the same time the overall percentage of the Muslim community in the region rose to 22 per cent, registering a sharp increase of around 13 per cent from what it was (around 9 per cent) in the year 1947.
It is noteworthy that several leaders of the opposition BJP have dropped hints that the party will go all guns blazing on the issue of Bangladeshi intruders and its ramification such as rapid change in demography in the Santhal region.
The same has been echoed by the Union Home Minister, Amit Shah who in a recent visit to the State vowed to issue a “White Paper” on the demographic change in the State if voted to power citing that the incumbent government has turned a blind eye towards grave issues such as “Land and Love Jihad”.
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