Lucknow: Samajwadi Party brass has asked its cadres to prepare for ‘PDA praharis’ to be deployed in case the BJP govt goes ahead to push for Special Annual Revision (SAR) of the electoral rolls through the Election Commission of India (ECI). The party is of the view that the BJP plans to use SAR to manipulate electoral rolls in the state ahead of the 2027 assembly elections.The party has issued necessary directions to its office bearers at the in-camera meeting of party’s district and city presidents and executive committee members held at the SP headquarters. The party had earlier deployed ‘PDA praharis’ in a systematic manner to closely monitor the SIR exercise. The move had yielded positive results as the ‘PDA praharis’ had exposed innumerable instances of alleged attempts to manipulate the electoral rolls, claim SP strategists.At the meeting, SP national president Akhilesh Yadav and party national general secretary Shivpal Yadav informed the party functionaries about the BJP’s plans to seek an SAR through ECI to manipulate the electoral rolls. He said the BJP was already violating the electoral process by getting Form 7 (meant for deletion of names from electoral rolls) being filled and submitted even after the SIR process had concluded.The two asked the party functionaries to prepare for constituting ‘PDA praharis’ in case the BJP gets the ECI roll out SAR. “A big conspiracy is underway in Uttar Pradesh. Before the elections, the BJP is trying to adjust its votes in the name of annual revision. There will be a large-scale conspiracy to include its own people in the voter list. It has come to light that people from Bihar, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh will come and enrol as voters to increase their vote count,” Akhilesh told party functionaries.He said in the light of the possibilities of BJP pushing for SAR, it will be necessary for the party to re-constitute ‘PDA praharis’ at the booth level on the lines of what the party functionaries had prepared during the SIR.These ‘PDA praharis’ had exposed attempts to seek deletion of names from electoral rolls of chunks of the populace which is seen as the traditional voters of the SP. The instances were documented and formal complaints lodged with the ECI. One of the most publicised instances was that reported from Sultanpur’s Jaisinghpur constituency where 26 different Form 7 objection forms were traced which sought cancellation of names from voters list. The Forms bore the signature of a local resident who was actually illiterate and used thumb impression.
