A clerical error involving an extra space in a man’s name led to him being declared ineligible during adjudication, an activist said on Sunday, highlighting the arbitrary removal of names from the electoral roll.
Yogendra Yadav, activist and founding member of Swaraj India, cited examples of four voters who were under adjudication and were subsequently deleted by judicial officers.
Yadav said he came to know of these cases through a friend in Calcutta.
“This is the case of a voter from Ballygunge. The spelling of his father’s name, as provided by the voter and as recorded in his passport, is Iftekharul. In the 20-year-old electoral roll, it appears as Iftek Harul — the same spelling, with only a space between ‘k’ and ‘h’. The Election Commission of India cited this as a case of logical discrepancy,” Yadav said at a news conference on Sunday afternoon.
The voter’s case was flagged as a logical discrepancy and placed under adjudication, following which his name was deleted from the electoral roll.
Yadav turned the heat on the ECI and said it must answer its own discrepancies.
The voter count in a state should be nearly equal to the adult population, as universal adult franchise is enshrined in the Indian Constitution, said Yadav.
He said that, according to data from the Union ministry of health’s expert group on population projection, Bengal’s voter count stood at 7.67 crore before the SIR. The voter list at that time was 7.66 crore.
“The match was nearly 99.67 per cent. I have not seen such a close match in any state. If anything, Bengal’s voter list was ideal, while the Election Commission says Bengal’s voter list was inflated,” he said.
Yogendra Yadav (second from right), activist and founding member of Swaraj India, speaks at the news conference at the Press Club on Sunday. The panel of speakers also has (from left) Deb Narayan Bandopadhyay, Parakala Prabhakar, Prashant Bhushan, Prof Omprakash Mishra and Akhil Swami. Picture by Sanat Kr Sinha
Organised by the Educationists’ Forum, an association of vice-chancellors, former vice-chancellors and academicians from state universities, the news conference highlighted the “manipulation of electoral mandate”.
Economist and political commentator Parakala Prabhakar said he was worried about the long-term implications of the SIR.
“The SIR has created two classes of India, one with franchise and another disenfranchised. It is a direct assault on the principle of universal adult franchise,”
he said.
“Even if we leave out the immediate implication of who wins and who loses the election, there is a long-term implication that is very worrying,” he added.
He said the impact of the Bengal Assembly election results would extend beyond the state, carrying wider implications across India. “It concerns me because the effects will be felt everywhere, even in Telangana, where I live,” he said.
Prabhakar said the Supreme Court has a golden opportunity on Monday to tell the nation that it is there to protect the people.
The apex court has fixed a hearing of the SIR in Bengal on Monday afternoon.
On April 6, the apex court declined to entertain the Bengal government’s plea to direct the 19 appellate tribunals to pass interim orders allowing at least certain categories of excluded voters to vote, saying “we do not want to rush it”.
The state government had sought the interim relief, particularly for the deleted but “mapped” voters, citing a purported 20 lakh-plus exclusions and the shortage of time for the tribunals to dispose of all the appeals.
Supreme Court advocate Prashant Bhusan, who was also present in Sunday’s news conference, questioned the neutrality of the Election Commission.
“It is functioning like a unit of the BJP. The commission even posts on social media, ‘we will show the Trinamool Congress’. Does a constitutional body act in this manner?” he asked.
