A delegation of Trinamool Congress leaders in Cooch Behar reached Roypara, an area under the Khapaidanga panchayat in Cooch Behar, on Friday and spoke to a section of voters whose names were missing in the 2002 electoral rolls uploaded by the Election
Commission.

On Thursday, Trinamool claimed that these voters were included in the hard copy of the 2002 electoral rolls.

Back in 2002, the booth (303) was under the Natabari Assembly constituency. After delimitation in 2008, it was included under the Cooch Behar north Assembly seat.

On Thursday, Trinamool leaders of the state and district claimed that the voter list of 2002, which has been uploaded on the EC website, shows there were 140 voters in the booth then.

“However, the hard copy of the 2002 voter list shows 721 voters. We want to know why there is a discrepancy and why names of so many voters have been removed in the list that was uploaded, particularly when the 2002 electoral roll is being considered as a yardstick in the special intensive revision (SIR),” party’s state general secretary Kunal Ghosh said.

Many politicians in the state said that they had 23-year-old hard copies of the 2002 electoral rolls as digital data-keeping wasn’t common then.

A day after Trinamool flagged this alleged discrepancy between the digital list of names and hard copies, party leaders Rabindranath Ghosh and Partha Pratim Roy visited the village to take stock of the situation. They were accompanied by local leaders like Khokon Mian, Parimal Barman and others.

“Villagers are worried and many of them who have names in the hard copy of the 2002 list were fearing whether their names would be enrolled again. We have asked them not to panic,” said Ghosh, a former minister and the civic chairman of Cooch Behar.

Former MP Roy came down on the BJP. “It is a blatant example of the BJP’s deep-rooted conspiracy. We will not let it succeed in its intention to delete the names of genuine voters,” Roy said.

The residents, even elected rural representatives among them, sounded perplexed. Sayat Hossain, a Trinamool member of the Khapaidanga panchayat, said: “I am the elected member from this booth, yet neither my name nor my family members’ names are there in the list uploaded by the EC.”

Debashish Roy, another villager, spoke in similar lines. “In 1998, my mother was elected as a panchayat member from the area. Now, in this list of 2002 that the Election Commission has uploaded does not have a single name of my family. How could it happen?” he said.

Trinamool leaders said they would file formal complaints with the EC and the district administration about these anomalies. Similar discrepancies have been found in some other booths of the district, they alleged.

Sources in the district election office said the data displayed on the EC website was still being updated. “We believe all confusions would die down once the update is complete,” said a source.