Mumbai, Nov 3 (IANS) Maharashtra Cultural Affairs Minister and former Mumbai BJP chief Ashish Shelar on Monday accused the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) and the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) of deliberately ignoring Muslim duplicate voters while focusing only on those speaking Hindi and Marathi.

“MNS chief Raj Thackeray does not see Muslims with duplicate names in many constituencies. Raj Thackeray too seems to have been affected by the so-called ‘vote jihad’ as he is now talking only about Hindi and Marathi-speaking duplicate voters in the lists,” Shelar said at a press conference.

The minister said the BJP never discriminates between voters, but claimed that the MVA and its new ally Raj Thackeray were “dividing voters along caste, religious and community lines”.

“We will expose them,” he asserted.

Shelar further alleged that during the Lok Sabha elections, the MVA had carried out a “well-planned vote jihad” and deliberately excluded the names of “many honest voters”.

To substantiate his charge, he presented a list of eight categories of alleged Muslim double voters in several constituencies, claiming a correlation with MVA legislators’ victory margins.

Taking on Raj Thackeray and the MVA, Shelar said, “Should we assume that the victories of many legislators were due to those Muslim duplicate voters?”

He reiterated that the BJP’s stance remains “justice for all, appeasement for none”.

Shelar accused the opposition of misleading the public with “utter lies” during the MVA’s Satyacha March (Truth March) held on Saturday in Mumbai.

“After the Assembly elections, the opposition suffered a big setback. From Pappu in Delhi to Pappu on the street, everyone started creating a fake narrative of vote theft. Now, on the eve of the upcoming local body polls, they are again trying to mislead people with false information,” Shelar alleged.

“By raising the false narrative of vote theft, the real scam committed by the MVA is being hidden. We are not speaking on behalf of the Election Commission, but are only presenting facts visible to the public,” he said.

Meanwhile, Shiv Sena (UBT) chief Uddhhav Thackeray strongly rejected the BJP’s allegations of a “vote jihad”, saying that his party, along with other MVA constituents and the MNS, has consistently demanded a clean-up of electoral rolls before holding local and civic body elections.

“The Election Commission should rectify all errors, including duplicate and bogus entries, in the voters’ lists. Neither the Shiv Sena (UBT) nor any other party has referred to any bogus voter by religion. We are not opposing elections, but we insist they should be held only after the electoral rolls are cleaned up,” Thackeray said at a press conference, held two days after the opposition’s Satyacha March in Mumbai.

He also alleged that the Election Commission and the Centre were “scared of Gen Z voters”, claiming that youths turning 18 after July 1 would be deprived of their right to vote in the forthcoming local and civic body elections.

“The youth who turn 18 after July 1 should be allowed to cast their votes in the upcoming polls,” Thackeray added.

–IANS

sj/pgh