Rajasthan: Congress accuses BJP of orchestrating mass voter deletion after BLO threatens suicide

The Congress in Rajasthan has accused the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party of orchestrating mass deletion of voters during the special intensive revision of electoral rolls, reported The Indian Express on Sunday.

This came after a video, showing a booth-level officer alleging that he was being pressured to delete hundreds of voters from the rolls of his Hawa Mahal Assembly constituency in Jaipur, was widely circulated on social media.

In the video, Kirti Kumar, a government teacher deployed as a BLO amid the SIR, can purportedly be heard saying on a call: “I will visit the collector’s office and will kill myself there.”

Kumar told The Indian Express that he was speaking with the councillor of the area, “who was pressuring me to delete the names”.

He has alleged that he was being “threatened and pushed beyond capacity” to look into the BJP’s objections seeking the deletion of 470 voters, mostly Muslims, from the draft electoral rolls, reported Newslaundry on Thursday.

Hawa Mahal is a Muslim-majority constituency that BJP MLA Balmukund Acharya won in the 2023 Assembly elections.

“How am I supposed to do that without following the procedure?” Kumar was quoted as saying by The Indian Express. “After my video went viral, senior officials intervened and told me to follow the rulebook.”

Suresh Saini, the councillor of the ward, denied Kumar’s allegations, claiming that there was “large-scale...

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