New Delhi, Mar 15 (PTI) AAP workers led by Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia, sat on a protest outside the Election Commission on Friday, alleging "politically motivated and illegal" raids were being conducted on a call centre hired by the party to make people aware that their names had been deleted from voters' lists.
After sitting for over three hours outside the Election Commission in protest, Sisodia and Lok Sabha candidates Atishi and Raghav Chadha were called by the Election Commission to hold a joint meeting with police officials.
After the meeting, Sisodia said, "We are responsible for making these calls to tell the public about their vote deletion. Telling people about their rights is not a crime."
Sisodia has alleged that a fourth raid on the call centre, hired by the AAP, was conducted barely an hour after he met Chief Election Commissioner Sunil Arora on Friday.
His delegation met the CEC to lodge a complaint against the Delhi police which, he claimed, was acting at the BJP's behest to harass call centre employees.
"After our meeting with the CEC, we were assured that he will look into the matter but within an hour we see that a fourth raid is conducted on the call centre," he said.
Special Commissioner of Police (Crime and EOW) Satish Golcha said an FIR was filed following complaints regarding bogus calls about the Delhi's electoral rolls and investigations are underway.
"As far as the allegations against us (Delhi Police) are concerned, we have already responded about them to the Hon'ble Election Commission. Moreover, no call centre owners have filed a complaint regarding harassment by our investigating team members," he said.
"Relevant facts of the matter are being ascertained. The investigation is being conducted strictly in accordance with law. Nobody has been arrested in the case so far. We are ascertaining facts from the call centres from where such calls have been made," he added.
Sources said the call centre employees are being questioned to ascertain who gave them the work of making the calls, how did they procure data of the callers and on what basis were they making claims about deletion of names of voters.
A BJP team had earlier met Arora and alleged that the AAP was making "misleading" phone calls about the city's electoral rolls.
Ahead of the Lok Sabha polls scheduled to begin on April 11, the Election Commission had directed the police to take "necessary action" against people making such calls. An FIR was also filed in this matter.
The AAP leaders asserted that they were responsible for hiring the call centre employees to make people aware that names had been deleted from voters' lists and the police should question the leaders instead of the workers.
The AAP alleged that BJP got more than 30 lakh voters' names deleted in Delhi.
When the Aam Aadmi Party started talking about this issue and hired a call centre to inform voters about it, the BJP got rattled and ordered the Delhi police to harass the call centre employees, the party alleged.
During the earlier meeting with Arora, Sisodia urged the EC to direct Delhi police to stop the harassment of the call centre employees.
"The Delhi police is working like goons. We urged the EC to stop the Delhi police from doing it. They (Delhi police) are pressuring and harassing the call centre employees," Sisodia said.
He alleged that these raids by the Delhi police are politically motivated and illegal conducted at the behest of the BJP.
He said this is the fourth raid on the call centre in four consecutive days.
Delhi Chief Minister and AAP national convenor Arvind Kejriwal also questioned the CEC. "Why is CEC raiding our call centres and asking for our data? What is our crime? Pl tell our crime at least," he said in a tweet.
