Gurdwara body polls: SGPC flags irregularities in voters’ list, seeks extension for fresh registrations

The Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC) on Wednesday called for extending the time period for the registration of new voters for the apex gurdwara body polls, alleging large-scale registration of bogus voters as well as incomplete voter lists.

SGPC members led by their president Harjinder Singh Dhami held a meeting at the head office of the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) in Chandigarh under the chairmanship of SAD working president Balwinder Singh Bhundar and Sukhbir Singh Badal.

The meeting put on record the large-scale manipulation in making voter lists for the SGPC elections with members showing data to prove how either the lists had been inflated with non-Sikhs and even en bloc addition of names from the assembly constituency voter list.

Sukhbir told the media that a party delegation would meet the chief commissioner of gurdwara elections Surinder Singh Saron on Thursday and apprise him about the complaints vis-a-vis registration of bogus votes.

“We will also apprise the chief commissioner that the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government is trying to rig the gurdwara elections by inflating the voter lists by registering bogus voters and even voters from other religions. The AAP government is trying every trick in the trade to include ineligible voters with the purpose of influencing the elections,” he said.

Senior party leader Daljit Singh Cheema said the SAD delegation would also apprise the chief commissioner that a thorough scrutiny of the voter lists was needed. “We will also appeal for extending the time for registration of fresh voters as a large number of eligible voters are yet to be included in the voter lists,” he said.

He added that the delegation would also submit evidence about en masse registration of ineligible voters to the gurdwara elections office even as party leaders will approach their respective sub-divisional magistrates to call for deletion of all ineligible voters.