Maharashtra cultural affairs minister Ashish Shelar alleged that Uddhav Thackeray and the MNS chief Raj Thackeray have tried to divide voters on the basis of caste and religion.
Mumbai: The allegations over the vote theft have intensified in Maharashtra with the BJP on Monday alleging that there was a well-planned ‘vote jihad’ during the Lok Sabha elections due to which the opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) won in the state. He exposed the names of Muslim voters who had been registered twice in the constituencies won by MVA leaders during the recent Assembly elections. However, Shiv Sena (UBT) chief Uddhav Thackeray hit back saying the BJP’s claims confirm the Opposition’s allegations that there are anomalies in the voters’ list.
Maharashtra cultural affairs minister Ashish Shelar alleged that Uddhav Thackeray and the MNS chief Raj Thackeray have tried to divide voters on the basis of caste and religion. He accused them of specifically naming only Hindu voters whose names appear twice in the electoral rolls while ‘shielding’ muslim voters.
Claiming that there are more than 16 lakh duplicate Muslim and Christian registered voters, he said the MVA selectively targeted Hindu names while objecting to duplicate voters. He pointed out that MNS chief Raj Thackeray had cited three alleged duplicate voters, all of whom were Marathi Hindus.
The minister asked, “Raj Thackerayji, do you only see duplicate voters as Hindi or Dalit people? They talk of beating the fake voters up, but why are they only Hindu, Marathi and Dalit?”
The BJP’s allegation came after the Opposition parties on Saturday carried out a rally in Mumbai accusing the ruling party of winning Assembly polls by rigging the electoral rolls.
Shelar listed 31 constituencies where the MVA won and showed how Muslim names had been registered twice or more times as voters. He also claimed that during the Lok Sabha elections, many honest voters did not find their names in the voters’ list, and the MVA was responsible for this as it was carrying out Vote Jihad through double registration of Muslims as voters in many constituencies.
Responding to the charge, Shiv Sena (UBT) chief Uddhav Thackeray dismissed Shelar’s claims, asserting that neither his party nor other opposition groups had ever identified fake voters by religion.
“With his statements, Shelar has admitted that the voter list has faults. We have never demanded filtering of specific names, our demand is simple: clean up the entire list,” Thackeray said, reiterating that the opposition wants a transparent verification of entries.
“By taking a press conference on anomalies in voters list Ashish Shelar proved that chief minister Devendra Fadnavis is in fact, the Pappu of Maharashtra. It might be the result of the internal politics of the BJP. I congratulate Ashish Shelar for it,” said Thackeray, without mentioning Fadnavis’ statement calling Thackeray’s son and Sena (UBT) leader Aaditya Thackeray as ‘Pappu’ of Maharashtra after Aaditya made a presentation regarding anomalies in voters list.
