The Shiromani Akali Dal has accused the Congress Government in Delhi of interfering in the Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee affairs and of using its apparatus to even deny the Opposition parties access to the electoral rolls, which are public documents.
President of the youth wing of Delhi Shiromani Akali Dal Manjinder Singh Sirsa said on Wednesday that the Directorate of Gurdwara Elections had issued a notification on December 10, 2011, to inform the Sikh voters that the draft electoral rolls in respect of the 46 gurdwara wards of Delhi for election of members in the DSGMC have been published by the respective Electoral Roll Officers and Assistant EROs of their wards inviting claims and objections from the Sikh citizens on the prescribed forms up to December 31.
However, Mr. Sirsa alleged that fraud was being committed on the Sikh community through this announcement as “no draft electoral rolls have been published yet”. Moreover, he claimed that the political parties in Delhi have also not been provided with a copy of the draft electoral rolls so far.
Seeing a political conspiracy in the whole affair, Mr. Sirsa claimed that “even clean shaven Congress workers are being registered as voters though they have nothing to do with the Sikh religion. It has been clarified in Form No. IV that a voter who trims or shaves his beard or ‘keshas’ cannot be registered as a Sikh voter.”
The Akali leader said the issue is also directly connected with the Assembly elections in Punjab as the Delhi Government feels that if the DSGMC polls are held around the same time it would bolster the prospects of the Congress supported group in Delhi since the SAD would be busy with the Punjab polls.
He demanded that certified copies of the draft electoral rolls be supplied to all the political parties at the earliest so that they can check and verify each and every voter and file objections.
“On my visit to the Punjabi Bagh Zone Office, I checked the voter list in the presence of ERO K.S. Bhoria and AERO J.S. Ranga and found that no list — either in English or Hindi or Punjabi — had been published yet,” he said, adding that the office possessed “only handwritten incomplete lists”.
Mr. Sirsa said the Zonal Offices are not providing the required information to the Sikh voters because they do not have the lists of draft electoral rolls with them.
News Source: The Hindu
