PATNA: An FIR has been lodged against journalist-turned-YouTuber Ajit Anjum in Bihar’s Begusarai district, wherein he has been booked on charges of allegedly interfering with Bihar’s electoral roll revision, provoking communal discord, and spreading misinformation regarding the ongoing process.Anjum, who runs a YouTube channel, has been booked under relevant sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) and the Representation of People Act, 1951. The complaint has been registered at Balia police station based on the statement of Mohammed Ansarul-Haque, a Booth Level Officer (BLO) under Sahebpur Kamal assembly constituency.According to Haque, Anjum, along with members of his team and a cameraman, visited the Balia block booth auditorium on 12 July around 9.30 am while he was uploading details of electors on the prescribed BLO App. After entering the auditorium without permission, Anjum allegedly fired a volley of questions regarding the ongoing revision of the electors’ list.BLO Haque said that Anjum pressurised him repeatedly to confirm whether electors of a particular community were being intimidated or influenced during the Special Summary Revision (SIR) process. He also sought to know about the number of electors, allotment of enumeration forms, and the number of people who had withdrawn their forms.Anjum further asked about the number of electors who had submitted their filled-up forms with documents. “I informed him that this particular booth has 1,020 electors and all of them have submitted their enumeration forms, which have been uploaded on the App,” Haque stated in the FIR.However, BLO Haque said that Anjum continued to raise questions about alleged intimidation of voters belonging to a particular community at the said polling booth. “Though I tried to convince him that such allegations were baseless, he was not in a mood to relent and pressurised me to admit it,” he said in the police complaint.BLO Haque also claimed that the SIR work was hampered for about an hour due to the intervention of the journalist-turned-YouTuber. They remained on the auditorium premises for more than an hour and allegedly filmed the process of uploading the electors’ details on the App, he added.Anjum later uploaded the SIR footage of the electoral rolls on his YouTube channel and also showed women employees engaged in the SIR work in another room. He also visited the Sub-divisional Office in Balia, where he allegedly attempted to contact some senior officials tasked with the SIR work. Anjum was also seen going through documents kept on tables and questioning employees.
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