As the 2008 Assembly polls are scheduled for December, the document, filed by the Foreigners’ Regional Registration Office (FRRO) before the Delhi High Court, gains importance. The affidavit, dated December 3, 2007, was filed on a petition alleging lapse on the part of the government to delete names of “fake and bogus voters” from the electorial list.

Justice Gita Mittal on Thursday wanted the Chief Electoral Officer and the Election Commission to clarify if names of deportees had been deleted from the list.

Listing the number of Bangladeshi nationals deported last year till November as 3,702, the FRRO stated in the affidavit: “Bangladeshis, who are entering India illegally, are being regularly deported by the FRRO with the help of other government agencies. But the affidavit is silent on whether the deportees’ figure in the voters’ list, and if so, have they been removed from the rolls. The court’s order today aims to address this lacuna,” said Ashok Kashyap, senior counsel for petitioner Dr V V Mahajan.

The petition also challenges a circular issued by the Election Commission of India on August 21, 2003, that “deletion of entry of a person concerned from his/her previous constituency can be done after the inclusion of his/her name in the new constituency”.

“The circular was leading to a situation where bogus voters, particularly Bangladeshis, Afghanis and Pakistanis, could easily get themselves enrolled in the electoral rolls,” the petition claimed.

“We had on September 22, 2003, given the Election Commission a compact disc containing 4,94,963 persons whose names appeared at two or more places in the electoral rolls for the Assembly constituencies of Delhi. But no action was taken on it,” said Kashyap.