EC should order police to stop raids on call centres, says Manish Sisodia
After the AAP alleged that the Delhi Police harassed the call centre employees who were informing people about voter list deletion, Delhi's Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia talked exclusively to Sayantan Ghosh before meeting the Chief Election Commissioner the second time on Friday.
The call centres which were raided by the police, what are these about?
Months before the announcement of the elections, the AAP found that more than 30 lakh names of voters were deleted. After we found this, Chief Minister himself informed the Election Commission about our findings. The party hired these call centres to inform the voters whose names are missing from the list. The work was going on smoothly but after Model Code of Conduct came into play, the Delhi police started to harass the call centre employees. We want to tell the EC to order police to immediately stop these raids and harassment.
You and MP Sanjay Singh with others already met the officials of the Election Commission on Friday morning but then again the delegation planned to meet the Chief Election Commissioner why is this such a big issue for AAP?
We all know that the Delhi Police comes under the BJP-led Central government and BJP is our prime opposition. The BJP is instructing the police to harass these workers so that we would be unable to reach out to the voters to inform that
their names are not in the list. In the morning meeting, we informed everything to the Election Commission but right after we left, back to back raids took place at call centres. Why are they doing this and by whose orders? Has the Election Commission ordered these raids? If not then the police are clearly working under the instructions of the BJP and trying to paralyse AAP's campaign. In this meeting with the Election Commission, we will ask for an immediate solution.
Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal alleged that the police are asking for server data, what is this data all about? In your first meeting has the EC said that the working of these call centres is illegal?
The EC never said that the working of these call centres are illegal and there is no question of illegal work. We have given responsibility to these call centres for public interest and so if there is any illegality about that then the police should question the party and its leaders. But the police are raiding these call centres without any notice and asking for the data they have regarding the names which were deleted from the list. We prepared this list, did research and went door to door hence it is our data and the CM himself shared our views with the EC earlier.
What are your key demands to the EC and why do you blame BJP about this matter?
This is the time of Model Code of Conduct and the EC has the entire power hence we want EC to direct the police to stop such action immediately. The BJP in Delhi is scared because they deleted these names from places where AAP is strong and now they are scared. The BJP feels that if these names are added again their plan will not work. We have faith in the EC and we believe that this atrocity will stop by the intervention of EC.
