Congress to Begin Madhya Pradesh Door-to-Door Drive Over Alleged Voter Deletions

The Congress is preparing to launch a statewide campaign in Madhya Pradesh over the deletion of names from the voter list. Starting 1 November, the party will conduct a door-to-door campaign across all 71 thousand polling stations in the state. Congress workers will carry voter lists to people’s homes and verify the names that are missing from the lists.

The party has planned this campaign as a major political and electoral drive. Instructions are being issued to everyone from district presidents to booth-level office-bearers to remain active during the exercise. The Congress wants the campaign to reach the ground level and not remain limited to organisational meetings or paperwork.

During the campaign, workers will visit voters and check the entries in the voter lists. The Congress has alleged that a large number of names were removed during the Special Intensive Revision, or SIR, of the voter lists.

The party will now try to find out whether voters whose names have been deleted are still present at the addresses linked to them. Workers will verify the details by visiting homes and checking the ground situation on a booth-by-booth basis.

If a voter is found at the address but the person’s name is missing from the voter list, the Congress will help submit an application under the prescribed process to get the name added again. Information collected at the booth level will be compiled into reports.

The party is preparing to raise the matter before the Election Commission on the basis of this verification. Congress leaders have said that the actual situation will become clear only after the booth-wise checking is completed. The party has instructed its booth-level teams to contact voters and help eligible people apply to have their names added again.

According to Madhya Pradesh Congress General Secretary Organisation Sanjay Kamle, more than 33 lakh names have been removed from the voter list in Madhya Pradesh. Of these, around 20 lakh names are reported to have been removed by placing them in the category of people who have permanently shifted.

The Congress has directed all its Booth Level Agents, or BLA, to reach out to voters. They have also been asked to help eligible voters complete the application process for the restoration of their names. The party has said that objections will be submitted before the Election Commission after the verification of the voter lists at every booth.

The Congress’s movement on the voter-list issue will not be restricted to Madhya Pradesh. As part of the same campaign, the party has instructed its district units to reach Delhi with as many workers as possible for the proposed demonstration on Monday.

Workers from various districts, including Morena, Gwalior, Shivpuri, Guna and Indore, have been asked to reach Delhi by Monday morning. The organisation is trying to ensure that Madhya Pradesh has an effective presence at the Delhi demonstration and that the issue of deleted names from voter lists is raised strongly at the national level.

The proposed campaign will also test the strength and activity of the Congress organisation at the booth level. Reaching all 71 thousand polling stations, checking the voter lists, collecting information about affected voters and completing the application process for them will be a major challenge for the party.

The Congress is seeking to turn the exercise into a detailed ground-level campaign. Its workers will first identify names that are missing from the lists, verify whether the concerned voters are present at their addresses, and then help eligible voters follow the prescribed process for restoring their names.

The reports prepared through this exercise are expected to form the basis of the party’s objections before the Election Commission. The party has maintained that booth-wise verification will help establish the actual position of the voter lists.

It remains to be seen how effective the Congress campaign becomes on the issue of names being deleted from voter lists. The next test will be whether the party can place strong and well-supported objections before the Election Commission on the basis of the facts collected by its workers at the booth level.