Terming the special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls as “software intensive rigging”, Trinamool MPs on Tuesday questioned the Election Commission of India on the “logical discrepancy” category of the ongoing exercise that came under the Supreme Court’s glare on Monday.
At a news meet, the party’s Rajya Sabha deputy leader Sagarika Ghose said that instances of different names of parents or too much or too little age difference between parent and progeny fell under “logical discrepancy”. Now, the Supreme Court has said that this logical discrepancy list should be thoroughly investigated...,” she said.
“Why was there no logical discrepancy in Bihar.... their (EC’s) real aim was Bengal.... Their conspiracy is the attempt to take away the right to vote for the voters of Bengal,” Ghose alleged.
In the second phase of the SIR in progress in Bengal and 11 other states and Union territories, the EC further tightened the screws on voters by disallowing the collection of documents by booth-level officers as was allowed in Bihar.
Electors whose names or parents’ names can’t be found in the 2002 intensive revision need to prove their date and place of birth from a specified set of documents.
Such voters are now attending hearings at block and subdivisional offices, getting their documents verified and explaining why those are not linked to previous rolls prepared over two decades ago.
Voters with “logical discrepancies” in enumeration forms or with spellings incorrectly registered or incorrectly translated from Indian language scripts to the Roman script with the help of sofware have also received
hearing summons.
In a border state like Bengal, where the BJP has insinuated that many Bangladeshi infiltrators are voters, tensions at such summons are running high.
The SC questioned the logic of the new filters, and directed the EC to publicise the names of such voters.
Trinamool’s leader in the Rajya Sabha Derek O’Brien asked the EC to release the transcript of the meeting with their delegation on November 28 and December 31.
He said at the news meet: “What does SIR actually stand for? Software Intensive Rigging.... Because if you release... whatever transpired in the last four hours or five hours of meetings with them (the EC), what happened at those meetings and what happened yesterday (Monday, in court), then people will get to know. And we are glad that the people of Bengal are fighting this. This is not Trinamool versus somebody else. No, this is the people of Bengal versus those trying to make the electoral process burdensome on the elector.”
The EC has not publicly responded to Trinamool’s charges. However, a senior EC official told The Telegraph: “The order has just been uploaded on the Supreme Court website. Local officials in Bengal are working to implement it. The EC may issue an appropriate order extending the time to file claims and objections after the lists are displayed, as directed by court.”