Mumbai: Alleging a huge mess in the draft voters list in Mumbai, Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Aaditya Thackeray on Friday threatened to file a case of sedition against the Election Commission. He raised several objections over the draft electoral roll published by the State Election Commission on November 20 for the upcoming Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) elections. Calling the commission a BJP’s agent, he alleged that efforts are being made to fix the results in BJP’s favour even before the voting.
Mr. Thackeray claimed there were duplicate and even triplicate entries for the same voter, names of people who do not exist, and cases where 40 to 50 voters were registered at cramped addresses that could not possibly house so many people.
“In some places, the voter list has been partially broken from even a building, and shifted an entire Vidhan Sabha constituency. This is nothing but Vote Chori. If it is incompetence from the EC, they must be sacked. If it is on purpose as we see it, the EC must be charged for anti-national activities and preventing voters from exercising their constitutional right,” said Mr. Thackeray.
The Shiv Sena UBT MLA said that the Election Commission’s decision to use the July 1, 2025 voter roll for all 29 municipal corporations will leave out thousands of young adults who turned 18 after that date and should have been able to vote in their first civic election. New voters will be deprived of voting due to the acceptance of this voter list, he added.
Targeting the election commission for allegedly favouring the BJP, the Shiv Sena UBT leader said, “This election commission runs from the office of the ruling party. The electoral roll has been so messed up that it seems like the elections are being set up. Vote theft and cheating continue.”
The former Maharashtra minister said since the draft list is voluminous and not machine-readable, political parties will need more time to study it. He attributed the flaws in the list to the “incompetence” of the State Election Commissioner. “Today, we exposed the planned Vote Chori of the Election Commission that works for BJP, in Mumbai for the BMC. The draft voter roll to be released on November 7, was released yesterday (Thursday), late evening. The draft roll is not machine readable, and in a format where one has to scroll all the way through almost 45,000 voters to find a name. Voter lists have been broken up, tactically, demographically and vote base wise, shifted to add to municipal wards where the BJP was weak,” he said.
“(We are) appealing to all political parties and citizens to find out the anomalies in the draft roll and to the State Election Commission’s vote chori,” Mr. Thackeray added.
