The Aam Aadmi Party on Friday claimed that the Election Commission has agreed to its demand to probe, without the involvement of the Delhi Police, the allegations that call centres hired by the party were making “misleading” calls to people about deletion of their names from electoral rolls.
AAP workers, led by Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia, had sat on a dharna outside the EC on Friday evening alleging that “politically motivated and illegal” raids were being conducted at the call centres.
After sitting there for over three hours, Mr. Sisodia, as well as AAP MP Sanjay Singh and Lok Sabha candidates Atishi and Raghav Chadha, were called in by the poll panel to hold a joint meeting with police officials.
No comment from EC
After the meeting, Mr. Sisodia claimed: “The Election Commission has agreed to hold a probe into the call centre issue, without the involvement of the police, which was our demand earlier.” There was no immediate response from the poll panel.
Mr. Sisodia had met Chief Election Commissioner Sunil Arora earlier in the day to lodge a complaint against the Delhi Police alleging that it was acting at the behest of the BJP to harass employees of the call centres.
The Deputy CM claimed that barely an hour after he met Mr. Arora, another raid was conducted — the fourth in as many days.
After this, the leaders decided to sit on a dharna outside the EC office. “We are sitting here because the Delhi Police is being misused by the BJP. It is resorting to hooliganism and acting like goons hired by Amit Shah to raid call centres hired by AAP,” Mr. Sisodia said.
‘Like Amit Shah’s goons’
Naming several police officers whom he claimed were “acting in a biased way” and “behaving like Amit Shah’s goons”, Mr. Sisodia demanded to know what was the “grave crime” committed by AAP.
“All we are doing is informing people to ensure that their names are on electoral lists. We are helping them get their names added back. What is the crime in giving people this information? It is their right. The entire State machinery from the EC downwards is usually engaged in this exercise. If AAP is hiring call centres for the same purpose, then what is wrong?” Mr. Sisodia said.
Mr. Kejriwal, meanwhile, took to Twitter to question the CEC. “Why is CEC raiding our call centres and asking for our data? What is our crime? Pl tell our crime at least [sic],” he tweeted. He also asked all AAP MLAs to join the protest outside the EC.
“The police raided without any search warrant and is barging into server rooms and interrogating all call centre agents. What is going on? What is the crime [sic] ?” he tweeted, followed by another tweet: “We need an answer. What is our fault that we are being raided [sic].”
“It is the responsibility of the EC to ensure free and fair elections and not let BJP’s Delhi police intimidate our call centres,” Atishi said.
FIR filed
A BJP team had earlier met Mr. Arora and alleged that AAP was making “misleading” phone calls about the city’s electoral rolls. Ahead of the polls, scheduled to begin on April 11, the EC had directed the police to take “necessary action” against people making such calls. An FIR was also filed in the matter.
“We have registered an FIR following complaints regarding the bogus calls about Delhi’s electoral rolls and investigations are under way. As far as the allegations against us [Delhi Police] are concerned, we have already responded about them to the EC,” the police said.
“No call centre owners have filed a complaint regarding harassment by our investigating team members The investigation is being conducted strictly in accordance with the law,” the statement added.
Mr. Sisodia, after the late-night meeting, tweeted: “Met EC officials and police officers at a joint meeting. We have stated that the party is behind the calls being made from these call centres and asking someone to get their vote made is not a crime, and that the police stop harassing these call centres [sic].”
In a following tweet, Mr. Sisodia claimed that the police had admitted that its teams had visited such call centres but that these visits “did not technically raid”.
