AIMIM president Asaduddin Owaisi on Thursday questioned the Election Commission over Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath's claim that 1.27 crore names had been deleted from the electoral rolls, news agency Press Trust of India reported.Owaisi demanded details of the voters whose names were removed and the reasons for their deletion. He also asked the Chief Election Commissioner and other election commissioners to explain the basis of the figure cited by Adityanath.Addressing a press conference in Lucknow with ASP (Kanshi Ram) chief Chandrashekhar Aazad, Owaisi said, “How has the chief minister calculated the figure of 1.27 crore?

Let the Election Commission give us the list as well.”He asked how many of those whose names were allegedly deleted were non-Indian citizens and how many had been identified as infiltrators. According to PTI, Owaisi cited data on the Election Commission's website that he said showed 2.89 crore names had been deleted from the electoral rolls.

These included 46 lakh people marked as deceased, 25 lakh listed as duplicates, 1.3 crore recorded as having shifted and 87.19 lakh marked as absent.He sought an explanation for the deletions in each category and asked the Election Commission to make the relevant data available. Owaisi said his party had opposed the legislation concerning the appointment of election commissioners and the legal immunity granted to them.

He argued that the selection process gave the government an undue advantage.He also said he had warned in Parliament that the Special Intensive Revision, or SIR, of electoral rolls could become a “backdoor NRC”.Referring to the SIR exercise in Bihar, Owaisi said his party had been part of an alliance with the Azad Samaj Party (Kanshiram) and had approached the Supreme Court over alleged discrepancies in the electoral rolls.Owaisi said his party had submitted 900 names that it claimed had been wrongly included in Bihar's supplementary voter list. It had now filed another petition seeking a review of the SIR exercise in the state, PTI reported.He said his party had also developed applications to access the 2002 electoral rolls in Telangana, Maharashtra, Delhi and three districts of Uttarakhand.

The party had helped people at its offices without discrimination, he added.Owaisi said AIMIM had raised concerns about the SIR exercise from the beginning and wanted the Election Commission to clarify the claims about voter deletions in Uttar Pradesh.- Ends(With PTI inputs)