Assam Opposition parties lodge police complaint against BJP for ‘poll roll manipulation’

Five Opposition parties in Assam jointly lodged a police complaint on Friday (January 9, 2026), accusing the ruling BJP of a conspiracy to delete the names of a large number of genuine voters from the State’s electoral rolls.

The parties are the Congress, Raijor Dal, Communist Party of India (Marxist), CPI (Marxist-Leninist), and the Assam Jatiya Parishad.

The Raijor Dal petitioned the Election Commission (EC) separately, alleging a “systematic and unconstitutional” bid by the BJP to doctor the electoral rolls.

In the complaint filed at Guwahati’s Dispur police station, the five parties claimed that Assam BJP president and MP Dilip Saikia was spearheading the conspiracy through the party MLAs, who have been instructed to ensure the deletion of names of anti-BJP voters in at least 60 of the State’s 126 Assembly seats.

The special revision of electoral rolls is under way in Assam, where elections are due by May. The updated draft roll was published on December 27, 2025, and the final list is expected on February 10.

‘Seize phone evidence’

The Opposition parties complained that Mr. Saikia entrusted the “deletion mission” to Health Minister Ashok Singhal during an online meeting on January 4. “This is an evil design to delete the names of supporters of Opposition parties from the electoral rolls. The video conference footage involving State BJP president Dilip Saikia should be secured immediately and preserved, as it contains crucial evidence,” the complaint read.

The Opposition parties urged the police to book the “culprits and conspirators” according to the law for a free, fair, and transparent special revision in the State.

Raijor Dal chief and Sivasagar MLA Akhil Gogoi was the first to flag the “evil plan”. On Friday, he wrote to the EC, demanding a high-level, independent probe into the January 4 virtual meeting on “voter list management”.

He asked the poll panel to secure all digital records and communication logs of the BJP leadership concerning the “10,000 votes per constituency” directive, conduct a thorough audit of all Form 7 (objection to inclusion) applications filed over the last three months across the State, and halt the special revision process till the matter is resolved.

Smear campaign, says BJP

The BJP trashed Mr. Gogoi’s allegation. It indicated that the MLA extrapolated the deletion of the names of 11,000 Muslims, evicted from the Uriamghat area in Sarupathar Assembly constituency of Golaghat district, during the special revision of the poll rolls.

BJP spokesperson Jayanta Kumar Goswami said the Raijor Dal chief resorted to a smear campaign against Mr. Saikia to prevent the deletion of the names of these “Miyas” (a pejorative term for Bengali-speaking Muslims). “The Opposition parties have filed an FIR against the BJP president to fuel this conspiracy and indulge in Miya appeasement, thereby exposing their anti-indigenous mindset,” he said.