The Darjeeling (plains) organisational district committee of the Trinamul Congress has identified around 29 “fake” voters in the three Assembly constituencies of the district under the Siliguri subdivision, party leaders claimed here on Thursday.

The “fake” voters, they said, were found during a drive conducted by the party across the subdivision to check the voter lists, following instructions from chief minister Mamata Banerjee.

Mamata, while speaking at a party workers’ meeting in Calcutta on February 27, instructed leaders and workers to scrutinise the electoral roll at the booth level to prevent the inclusion of names of “people who do not live in Bengal".

“We conducted the driver during the past five days and have 29 fake or false voters so far in the subdivision. We will share the details with our state leaders and with the district administration. Our drive will also continue to find out if there are more such voters in these three Assembly constituencies,” said Papiya Ghosh, the Trinamool president of Darjeeling (plains) district.

According to her, 12 such “fake” voters were found in the Siliguri Assembly seat, 14 in the Matigara-Naxalbari constituency, and the remaining three in the Phansidewa Assembly segment.

All these people have names in multiple electoral rolls, Ghosh claimed.

There are five Assembly seats in the Darjeeling district, the other two being Darjeeling and Kurseong.

In the course of the drive, the TMC leaders have also found the names of 558 voters who are dead but their names exist in the voter list. This apart, there are 240 such voters whose names have been deleted from the electoral roll without any reason.

“We fear there might be some more such cases. Our workers have been asked to conduct a complete scrutiny of the voter list of their respective booths,” he added.

Siliguri mayor Gautam Deb said they wanted to confirm there was no anomaly in the electoral roll.

“It is a ploy of the BJP to induct people of other states in Bengal’s voter list ahead of next year’s Assembly polls. We will not let it happen. There are reports that names of genuine voters have been deleted without proper reasons. We will take initiatives to ensure that their names are included in the electoral roll again,” Deb, who is also a national working committee member of the TMC, said.