Punjab’s draft electoral rolls prepared by the Election Commission of India under its Special Intensive Revision (SIR) program now contain the name of Punjab’s Rajya Sabha MP Raghav Chadha with the annotation ‘permanently shifted. Chadha, whose political journey took him from the Aam Aadmi Party to the BJP, called the omission of his name a politically motivated action taken by the irate administration.
“This does not seem like a mere clerical mistake. The Absent, Shifted, Deceased, and Duplicate list published on August 13 includes the MP among about 20 million voters not included in the revised list of the state’s electors.
This is a clear case of political vendetta,” Chadha said in a detailed social media post, alleging that the AAP government was using the state’s administrative machinery against those who had left the party. “Ever since I left the corrupt Aam Aadmi Party, its leadership has been burning with anger,” he said. SIR Remedy: Pointing out that the currently available list of voters is in draft only, the MP said he was going to make all the rectifications as suggested by the guidelines of the Election Commission.
Effect on parliamentary membership
Protection of the public right : Saying that the rolls of the state are not owned by any political party, Chadha pledged to fight this omission through legal means. Legal protections : The amendments in the Representation of the People Act in the year 2003 removed the provision of maintaining voter identity as a pre-requisite for being a candidate for Rajya Sabha election. Earlier reporting noted: The allegations came after reports surfaced that Chadha’s name appeared in the list of voters deleted from the Punjab draft electoral roll published on August 13.
The Indian Express reported that the list, known as the ASDD (absent, shifted, deceased and duplicate) list, had Chadha’s name under the “permanently shifted” category. Earlier reporting noted: Chadha also cited Paragraph 4(d) of the Election Commission of India’s detailed guidelines for SIR, arguing that public representatives, including MPs and MLAs, fall under a “protected list” whose names, if flagged in the electoral database, should be included in the draft rolls to facilitate the claims and objections process.
Earlier reporting noted: However, Chadha stressed that the list is still a draft and that voters can challenge such deletions during the claims and objections process.
