The deletion has sparked a political faceoff. Whereas Chadha has alleged “political vendetta” by the AAP authorities in Punjab, a senior Punjab authorities official and the AAP countered that the SIR is performed by the EC and the state authorities has “no function”.
Chadha’s identify seems on the checklist of these deleted within the Punjab draft roll, which was printed on August 13, Election Fee information present. That is the ASDD checklist (checklist of “absent, shifted, deceased and duplicate”). Towards his entry, is the noting: “completely shifted.”
Chadha was one of many 20.66 lakh or 9.7% of the pre-SIR citizens in Punjab deleted.
Punjab’s remaining SIR roll is scheduled to be out on October 12. These deleted within the draft stage have an opportunity to get again on the rolls by submitting a kind within the one-month window for claims and objections, from August 13 to September 12.
When requested about his deletion from the Punjab draft roll and what corrective motion he had taken, Chadha stated: “The AAP authorities in Punjab has now taken its politics of revenge to the draft electoral rolls. Fortunately, these are solely the draft electoral rolls and never the ultimate electoral rolls. They’re short-term in nature and topic to the claims and objections course of. I’m already within the means of availing the treatments supplied underneath the SIR pointers. I’ll make sure that this wrongful classification is corrected within the remaining electoral rolls to be printed in October 2026.”
Chadha identified that the detailed SIR pointers issued by the EC in June final 12 months had stated that public representatives ought to be included within the draft rolls.
“All names of members of judiciary, public representatives, holders of declared places of work and personalities from fields of arts, tradition, journalism, sports activities, and public companies and many others. earlier flagged within the electoral database, are to be included within the draft Electoral Rolls, in order that vital paperwork will also be collected in the course of the interval of Claims and Objections,” says Paragraph 4(d) of the detailed pointers issued on June 24, 2025.
“I’m a sitting Member of Parliament from Punjab. If in any respect my identify was flagged, Paragraph 4(d) required my inclusion within the draft electoral rolls. The instruction was not ignored. It was wilfully violated in my case. AAP might run the Punjab authorities, however Punjab’s draft electoral rolls aren’t its non-public property,” Chadha stated.
Saying that he was marked as “shifted” regardless of being an MP from Punjab, he added: “This doesn’t appear to be a mere clerical mistake. This can be a clear case of political vendetta,” he stated.
Denying Chadha’s allegations, a senior Punjab authorities official advised The Indian Specific: “These allegations are utterly false. The Punjab authorities has no function to play within the train. The CEO is an official appointed by the Election Fee of India”.
“SIR is performed by the EC, not the state authorities, so the Punjab authorities has no function in deciding whose identify is included or deleted from the electoral roll. It’s a matter of public report that Raghav Chadha has been dwelling in Delhi, and never in Punjab. If he now not resides in Punjab, sustaining or shifting his voter registration was his personal duty. He can not now blame the AAP or the Punjab authorities for the deletion of a voter entry,” a spokesperson for AAP stated.
Based on Part 3 of the Illustration of the Individuals Act, 1951, to be eligible to be a member of the Rajya Sabha, a candidate should be registered as an elector in any parliamentary constituency within the nation.
In his affidavit for the 2022 Rajya Sabha elections, Chadha had declared that he was registered to vote in Sales space Quantity 52 in Rajinder Nagar, Delhi.
Nonetheless, after he entered Rajya Sabha as an MP from Punjab, Chadha shifted his electoral registration to that state — he voted in a sales space in Punjab’s SAS Nagar, or Mohali, within the 2024 Lok Sabha elections on June 1, 2024.
A search on the EC’s Voter Companies Portal on Wednesday with Voter ID particulars of Chadha confirmed “no end result discovered” for each Delhi and Punjab. Delhi’s draft SIR roll was printed on August 31 with 33% of the pre-SIR voter names deleted.
Earlier than becoming a member of the BJP in April this 12 months, together with six different AAP MPs, Chadha, who was one in all former Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s shut aides, was on the forefront of AAP’s allegations of voter checklist manipulation.
On the heels of the Delhi Meeting polls in 2025, Chadha, sitting with then Delhi CM Atishi and Rajya Sabha colleague Sanjay Singh, had raised concern over what AAP had referred to as “an organised and large-scale voter fraud conspiracy” in Kejriwal’s constituency of New Delhi, terming it “a deliberate try to govern electoral outcomes.”
Calling it “surprising”, Chadha had alleged that over three days in early January 2025, hearings had been held on the EC’s workplace within the New Delhi constituency, the place all objectors, totalling 11, had been summoned and each one in all them “denied submitting any software to delete votes”, and stated that their names “had been misused.”
