The Election Commission has rejected four out of every 10 voter enrolment applications in Bengal over the past couple of months citing “fictitious” documents.
The high percentage of rejections against the usual 15 per cent has sparked concern at a time the Opposition has accused the poll panel of colluding with the BJP to manipulate voter rolls.
“A total of 10.04 lakh applications were received by the EC seeking inclusion of names in the electoral rolls between June 1 and August 7. Of them, 6.05 lakh were processed and the remaining (40.23 per cent) were rejected as they were supported by fictitious documents,” said a source in the poll panel.
The massive rejections assume significance against the backdrop of the possibility of a special intensive revision of poll rolls ahead of the Bengal elections in 2026.
Chief minister Mamata Banerjee has been calling the SIR a “backdoor NRC”, which she says is a “conspiracy to disenfranchise the poor and the marginalised who are unlikely to vote for the BJP”.
“The number of applications received by the EC for enrolling names in the past two months is very high. It is assumed that people applied to get their names included in the electoral roll ahead of the SIR… and also the number of rejections too is very significant,” a bureaucrat said.
The Election Commission’s impartiality as the custodian of all major elections in the country has been called into question on numerous occasions by the Congress, Samajwadi Party, the RJD, the DMK, the Left and the Trinamool since the controversial appointment of Gyanesh Kumar as CEC.
Kumar, who helmed what was seen as a quasi-political news conference last month to counter the Opposition’s allegations, had previously served as the country’s cooperation secretary under Amit Shah.
Sources said it appeared that the EC had become cautious in inserting names in the electoral rolls after it was found that several voters were included in some Assembly seats of Bengal based on “fictitious” papers.
The EC had instructed the Bengal government to suspend four officials and lodge FIRs against them after irregularities were detected in the voter rolls of Moyna in East Midnapore and Baruipur Purba in South 24-Parganas.
“The state suspended EROs (electoral registration officers) and AEROs (assistant election registration officers) of these two Assembly seats and sought some time to lodge FIRs against them. But stern measures by the EC have clearly sent a message to the officials, and now they are double-checking every entry into the electoral rolls,” a source said.
According to him, the EC found that instances of bogus names abounded in places where booth-level officers (BLOs) skipped house visits and contractual data entry operators entered the names using the login credentials of the EROs.
The EC has now made it mandatory for BLOs to be appointed from the pool of government employees in the Group C category and above. No contractual data entry operators will be allowed to carry out any poll-related work.
“These two steps, along with stern measures against errant officials, seem to be working as the applications are being verified properly, resulting in so many rejections,” claimed a bureaucrat.
Border districts of the state topped the list of rejected applications with Murshidabad (56.44 per cent) taking the top spot, followed by Cooch Behar (44.83 per cent), North Dinajpur (44.81 per cent), South 24-Parganas (44.68 per cent), Malda (41.25 per cent) and Nadia (42.11 per cent).
Senior district officials said several people might have submitted the applications in a hurry fearing an imminent SIR and could not attach the required documents inthe rush.
“But we cannot rule out the possibility that many illegal immigrants tried to get into the electoral rolls ahead of the SIR. It is also possible that political parties filed fictitious applications based on bogus papers so that they can use the voter card for proxy voting,” said a senior official.
Despite the rejections, the Bengal CEO’s office is yet to receive a single complaint, EC sources said.
The Congress condemned the large-scale rejection of voter applications.
The party’s chief spokesperson in Bengal, Soumya Aich Roy, called it a precursor to an SIR.
“A proto-SIR, you could call this, for Bengal... by the Gyanesh Kumar Commission, obsequiously carrying out the orders of Amit Shah,” Aich Roy said. “The districts with the high percentage suggest this process is tainted with communal prejudice as well.”
The CPM refrained from equating the rejection of applications with the situation in Bihar. State CPM secretary Md Salim did not rule out the possibility of Trinamool and the BJP trying to load the voters’ list with bogus names to “tilt the balance” intheir favour.
“The issue in Bihar is different. In that state, enrolled voters are being disenfranchised. It is different from the rejection of applications. The TMC and the BJP, which are trying to effect a demographic shift using the voters’ list, could be playing a dubious role and that could have led to the large-scale rejections. In the past, we had pointed out the existence of bogus voters, but the EC did not take any action. The EC should not stop with mere rejections. If fictitious documents had been used, then those responsible should be punished. But if there is any foul play by the EC, we will stand by those who will be denied their right to vote through such rejections,” Salim said.
Trinamool iterated its national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee’s stand that the SIR actually meant “Silent Invisible Rigging”, and these actions seemed to be a part of broader “nefarious designs”.
“First, they want to exclude genuine voters. Second, they want to bring the National Register of Citizens through the back door. These two are the foremost priorities of the commission under Gyanesh Kumar blindly carrying out orders of their political bosses. This Nirvachan Sadan is working as an agency of the BJP,” said Rajya Sabha member Ritabrata Banerjee.
“None of this will be taken lying down. This is Bengal, a very different turf, with Trinamool standing guard. Everything will be scrutinised and every wrong will be challenged,” he added.
The BJP defended the EC. “The EC’s actions prove that charges made by the BJP on earlier occasions about how fake voters pose a threat to democracy and demography in Bengal are true. This is also an instance of how Trinamool has been trying to misuse the electoral machinery at the ground level,” BJP spokesperson Debjit Sarkar said.