The warring Trinamool Congress and the BJP both knocked on the doors of Nirvachan Sadan, the office of the Election Commission of India, on Tuesday evening and demanded sanitisation of the electoral rolls in Bengal ahead of the Assembly election scheduled for next year.
Union minister of state for education Sukanta Majumdar demanded an extensive review of the electoral rolls in Bengal.
“The atmosphere in Bengal is unlike other states. There is so much violence that scrutiny of the electoral list is not possible,” Majumdar said after his meeting with chief election commissioner Gyanesh Kumar and other officials of the central poll panel.
“We have demanded an extensive review of the existing electoral roll. We have also asked the EC to make use of technology to sanitise the list,” Majumdar said. “Suppose accounts of one lakh pension holders are closed in a year. That data can be used to remove the names from the voters list. In the crematoriums and burial grounds, death certificates are digitally registered. Why can’t the voters list be updated accordingly?”
The Trinamul has also asked for the central poll panel on two issues flagged by it and made specific suggestions for the Constitutional body to consider.
“There have been concerns in various states over arbitrary deletions of existing voter names and addition of new voters in the electoral roll. However, there is no existing mechanism to determine how many voter names have been deleted and how many new voters have been added after every revision of the electoral roll. Therefore, it’s extremely important that the EC issue a separate list of voter deletions, new additions and modifications with every new revised electoral roll,” the Trinamul has demanded.
The party has also expressed concern over lack of safety mechanism in the entry of new electors through the online portal.
“Due to a lack of a proper verification system for uploaded documents - particularly address proofs -voters are being fraudulently registered. There are cases of such fake voter registration applications being approved by electoral officials through their apps (BLOapp & ERONET) without any proper in-person or door-to-door verification of the documents. Therefore, the ECI must clarify the steps being taken to prevent online voter registration based on fake documents and how it plans to ensure a robust verification mechanism,” the Trinamul asked.
The war of words between the BJP and the Trinamool over electoral rolls started after Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee accused the BJP and the Election Commission of being in cahoots to manipulate electoral rolls.
The party had also alleged that electoral photo identity card holders in two different constituencies had same alphanumeric codes, which the EC accepted but called a “decades-old” problem that it would solve in three months.
Majumdar said the Trinamool’s claims were erroneous.
“If there are two voters with the same identity card number they can vote in the constituency where they are registered. That is not the issue. The issue is if the same person with the same identity card number has his names in two different constituencies,” he said.
The Bengal BJP has claimed the existence of 17 lakh false voters in Bengal.
“Without false voters Trinamool cannot win,” said former BJP Lok Sabha MP Dilip Ghosh. “In every Assembly constituency they want to include additional 5,000-6,000 false voters before the Assembly polls.”
The BJP delegation led by Majumdar also included Rajya Sabha MP Samik Bhattacharya, the Bengal BJP minder Amit Malviya and Om Pathak, the national coordinator (Election Commission) for the saffron party.
A Trinamool delegation, including the party’s Rajya Sabha leader Derek O’Brien, Lok Sabha MP Kalyan Banerjee and eight other parliamentarians from both the Houses, is also at Nirvachan Sadan to meet the CEC and other poll officials.
The Trinamul’s Serampore MP Kalyan Banerjee, after the meeting with the CEC, said, the EC has not been able to provide any definite answer.
“The people’s trust on the EC has eroded. The EC had earlier said the corrected list would be published by April. Today they said the date could be extended. We are not satisfied with the EC’s response. In West Bengal, I have come across the name of one single voter in three different constituencies. How could this happen?” asked Banerjee.
“If we look at the constituencies where the names of voters from other states have been included, we will find those have either a BJP MP or MLA.”
After Mamata’s call for cleaning up the voters list in the state, senior Trinamul leaders have been doing the rounds in many areas.
“Some voters who have left the constituency, their names still remain (in the voters' list). Many genuine voters have been removed from the electoral rolls,” said city mayor Firhad Hakim.
In a memorandum submitted by the Trinamul delegation, the party claimed to have received “credible allegations” of cloned Aadhaar cards being used to “facilitate fake voter registrations.
“Why has EC not clearly stated on its Form 6B that seeding Aadhaar with EPIC is an entirely voluntary process and that it is not compulsory? How does the EC ensure that the alleged cloning of Aadhaar numbers does not affect the EPIC and electoral registration of voters?” the Trinamul has asked.