Panaji: Questioning claims of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls being transparent, Goa Forward Party (GFP) has claimed that Goa’s electoral rolls are being manipulated to rig the elections in favour of BJP. GFP president Vijai Sardesai said that 50 voters from a single ward of Curtorim were shifted to Fatorda in order to benefit the BJP candidate.A group of 50 voters who, after delimitation in 2012, have voted in Curtorim, are now shown as voters on the Fatorda electoral roll after the SIR. The office of the Chief Electoral Officer has not initiated any process to redraw the assembly area or recalibrate the number of voters in each constituency.Additionally, Sardesai said that 4,500 voters were deleted from his constituency, of whom, in the initial scrutiny, 1,000 voters were found to be legitimate voters. “If the SIR is meant to be a verification process to purify the rolls, then why did the system not identify these voters who do not belong to the Fatorda constituency?” said Sardesai.He has written to the Chief Electoral Officer Sanjay Goel demanding correction in the voter roll and suspension of the govt officers who were involved in the manipulation. Sardesai has threatened to approach High Court if action is not taken.“Some andhbhakt voters are voting in constituencies where they can sway the vote. This is rigging. I have asked for an inquiry and for the officers to be dismissed. I will not wait to approach the court,” said Sardesai, as he called the errors in the electoral rolls the “tip of the iceberg”.“This is the biggest vote chori where instead of removing the voters, ineligible voters are brought in. These 50 voters voted in 2012 in Curtorim, in 2017 in Curtorim and suddenly they are now in Fatorda,” said Sardesai.He questioned the govt’s role in the manipulation, saying that shifting of Hindu voters from Curtorim to Fatorda could not be a coincidence or error. The GFP has begun to scrutinise the voter rolls of Fatorda while also reaching out to the voters whose names were deleted in order to identify if any genuine voter has been removed from the list.We fear a dangerous pattern: genuine voters being disenfranchised while ineligible voters from outside are being inserted into the rolls.
