‘MVA never questioned duplicate voting in Muslim areas, won elections because of this’: BJP’s Ashish Shelar

Raj and Uddhav Thackeray, in a rally on Saturday, had called for duplicate voters to be beaten up for double voting. Raj, while reading out a list, said that “some Bhoir and Patil from Bhiwandi and Dombivli” were also registered as voters in Malabar Hill

MUMBAI: Two days after the opposition charged the BJP with winning the assembly elections by rigging the electoral rolls, the party hit back. In a press conference on Monday, BJP leader Ashish Shelar presented examples of ‘repeated voters’ (those entered on the lists of multiple booths), mainly Muslim, in 31 assembly constituencies and claimed that these had helped opposition candidates win the Lok Sabha polls and the opposition leaders in Assembly polls. Shiv Sena (UBT) chief Uddhav Thackeray, in response, thanked Shelar for confirming the opposition’s allegations that there were indeed anomalies in the voters list.

BJP leader Ashish Shelar (HT Photo)

Raj and Uddhav Thackeray, in a rally on Saturday, had called for duplicate voters to be beaten up for double voting. Raj, while reading out a list, said that “some Bhoir and Patil from Bhiwandi and Dombivli” were also registered as voters in Malabar Hill. Seizing the opportunity to give it a religious spin, BJP representative Shelar said that the cousins were questioning only Hindu and Dalit voters while repeated Muslim voters were not mentioned because the opposition MVA had benefited from them in the Lok Sabha polls.

Shelar, in his presentation, said that the electoral rolls had eight types of anomalies in Muslim-dominated areas’ voter lists. He named Muslim voters in Karjat Jamkhed constituency (represented by Rohit Pawar, NCP-SP), Islampur (Jayant Patil, NCP-SP), Sakoli (Nana Patole, Congress) and Bandra East (Varun Sardesai, Shiv Sena-UBT) while pointing out some of these discrepancies. “In other Muslim-dominated constituencies such as Mumbadevi and Dharavi, multiple photos of a single voter have been registered with different names, while one Ramazan Ali Hadis Khan has been registered twice, as both a male and a female,” he said.

Shelar said that a scan of 31 assembly constituencies had revealed numerous duplicate voters, more than the winning margin of opposition leaders. “The MVA constituents did not object to the duplicate entries in the Lok Sabha election, as they won more seats than us,” he said. “The difference in votes polled by the two sides was just 2.03 lakh, against which there were 16.84 lakh duplicate Muslim voters across the state. Some of the examples are startling. Rohit Pawar won by 1,243 votes while the duplicate voters in his constituency are 5,562. Nana Patole won by 208 votes with the help of 477 duplicate Muslim voters. Jitendra Awhad won with the help of 30,601 duplicate Muslim voters.”

Responding to Shelar, Thackeray congratulated him for confirming that there were anomalies in the voters’ list, and riposted that he and other opposition leaders had demanded voter verification in all constituencies, including Muslim-dominated ones. Taking a dig at Devendra Fadnavis, who had called Aaditya the “Pappu of Maharashtra” after he made a presentation on dubious voters lists, Thackeray said, “By calling a press conference on anomalies in the voters list, Ashish Shelar proved that Devendra Fadnavis is, in fact, the Pappu of Maharashtra. Perhaps this is due to the internal politics of the BJP. I congratulate Shelar for this.”