SIR: 544 Muslim voters marked for deletion in UP village leads to one man

Lucknow: The names of as many as 544 Muslim residents from the Louharipur village in Shamli district were reportedly asked to be deleted from the electoral rolls during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise in Uttar Pradesh, the Indian Express reported.

After another extension, the final voter list is expected to be released mid-April with the claims and objections round over, and the SIR in its last stages.

According to the report, on February 14, Form 7s – used for objecting the inclusion of existing names in the electoral roll – with names of 544 Muslims were reportedly found tucked in an envelope with the Booth Level Officer (BLO) at a primary school in the village.

These names accounted for nearly half of the village’s 1,100 registered voters. All Form 7s were traced back to the same applicant named Ved Pal.

Even after a month, the residents in the Muslim-majority Louharipur village say their queries about the forms remain unanswered. The poll officials claimed the documents were fake, but that did little to calm the locals’ worries as members from almost every family in the village were on the list of 544 names.

Villagers said a local youth initially saw BLO Mukesh with the stack of forms and asked her about it. The forms were allegedly already printed with Electors’ Photo Identity Card (EPIC) numbers and other personal details. In the forms, the applicant cited relocation from the village as the reason for seeking their deletion from the electoral rolls.

Villagers hold panchayat to discuss issue

After they received unsatisfactory answers from Mukesh, the villagers made copies of the 544 forms and convened for a panchayat to discuss the issue.

“At the meeting, it was decided that we would lodge a complaint with the district administration,” Mohammed Kamil told The Indian Express.

The 72-year-old is one of 10 people from his family included in the list

An 80-year-old retired primary government school teacher, Fakhruddin, said all 544 residents in the forms named for deletion lived in the village. “In fact, some of them are government officials living here,” he said.

A village head between 2016 and 2021, Nusrat, 35, who was also named in the list, said the youth who spotted the forms was a graduate, so he was able to understand them.

“If he hadn’t, maybe our names would not have been deleted. The administration has taken no interest in this issue,” Nusrat said.

Authorities find ‘no substance’ in the case

The issue escalated after villagers caught the BLO taking away the Forms 7s from the school on a Sunday evening, leading to the involvement of Shamli District Magistrate (DM) and the police.

DM Arvind Kumar Chauhan ordered a probe and later said that the case “didn’t have any substance.” “We got an investigation done and found nothing,” he added.

When asked if Ved Pal was the only applicant of all forms, the DM said, “No, we couldn’t find him (Pal). The forms were all fake.”

Nearby Kandhla Police Station House Officer Satish Kumar repeated the claims, saying the issue “had no substance.”

When The Indian Express traced the 76-year-old Pal to Khandrawali village, three kilometers from Louharipur, he was not at home. While his wife refused to talk, Pal, when contacted over the phone, said, “I don’t want to talk about the issue.”

A local Sub-Divisional Magistrate official handling the SIR work said there were still concerns. When they were approached by several villagers, the officials reportedly called up the BLO, who did not have concrete answers.

“We called up the BLO and asked her what had happened… She didn’t have answers as to where the forms came from. We told her to be more vigilant in the future,” the official said.

Samajwadi Party files complaint

Ashok Chaudhary, Samajwadi Party Shamli district chief, said he issued a complaint to the DM and SHO over the issue. “Why was a BLO, a government official, carrying these forms? Where did the forms come from? Why has Ved Pal not been found and questioned? They are trying to cover up the issue,” he said.

Apprehensive over the officials’ claims of conducting a thorough investigation, Nusrat, the former village head, said, “Why wasn’t Ved Pal asked if and why he had filled the forms?… The administration doesn’t want the truth to come out.”

Meanwhile, BLO Mukesh, who remains stationed in her office at the primary school, dismissed any questions regarding the Form 7s. “I have a lot of pending work,” she said, still in the process of clearing election-related documents.