NEW DELHI: The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) chief Arvind Kejriwal has accused rival Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of enrolling fake voters in Delhi.

The two parties are set to lock horns during the upcoming by-elections to fill three seats in the Delhi legislative assembly.

According to Kejriwal, BJP lawmakers have been instructed by a top party leader to buy 5,000 fake votes in each of Delhi’s 70 assembly constituencies and delete names of voters of his party from the voters’ list.

Kejriwal said the bribe rate is Rs1,500 (Dh90) for fake votes and Rs200 for deleting any vote and claimed he was informed of this clandestine move by sources within the BJP. The AAP will formally lodge a complaint with the Election Commission on Monday.

Kejriwal’s charge against the BJP came just hours before the Election Commission’s surprise move to declare holding of by-elections to fill up three vacancies since February this year after Kejriwal-led AAP government quit office after remaining in power for 49 days.

The poll panel announced yesterday that voting will take place for Mehrauli, Tughlakabad and Krishna Nagar seats on November 25 along with voting in the first of the five-phased elections in Jammu and Kashmir and Jharkhand.

BJP leaders Parvesh Singh Verma, Ramesh Bidhuri and Dr Harsh Vardhan had resigned from Delhi assembly following their election to the new Lok Sabha.

AAP and BJP had bagged 28 and 31 seats respectively in the hung Delhi assembly elected in December last year. AAP formed the government with outside support of eight Congress party lawmakers after BJP declined an invitation to form the government. Kejriwal unexpectedly resigned on February 14 after being in power for 49 days with an eye on the summer general elections where his party fared badly winning just four seats, all of them from Punjab. Kejriwal himself lost badly to now Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Varanasi.

The poll panel’s decision to hold by-elections indicate the Modi government has no plans of dissolving the hung Delhi assembly and order fresh polls.