A delegation of Trinamool Congress MPs will meet the newly appointed chief election commissioner Gyanesh Kumar on Tuesday evening.
Trinamool’s Rajya Sabha leader Derek O’Brien said six members from the Lok Sabha led by Serampore MP Kalyan Bandyopadhyay and four from the upper House including O'Brien will go to meet Kumar and apprise him of the party’s grievances on duplicate electoral photo identity cards.
“We want to ask the EC to give us a number: How many duplicate EPICs are in circulation right now,” said O’Brien.
The Trinamool MPs will raise the issue in both the Houses of the Parliament on Monday.
In a statement released on Friday, the EC had admitted to the presence of photo identity cards issued by the central poll panel to the voters with the same alphanumeric code in multiple cards.
The poll panel promised to clean-up the “decades-long” discrepancy over the next three months.
"As regards the issue of duplicate Electoral Photo Identity Card (EPIC) numbers, the Commission has already taken cognisance of the matter. Irrespective of an EPIC number, an elector who is linked to the electoral roll of a particular polling station can cast his vote at that polling station only and nowhere else," it asserted.
The poll authority said it has now decided to resolve this "long-pending issue" after detailed discussions within the technical teams and concerned state chief electoral officers in the next three months by ensuring a "unique national EPIC number" to the existing electors having a duplicate EPIC number. The new system will be applicable for future electors as well, it added.
The Trinamool had flagged the issue of identity cards with the same alphanumeric code being issued to two different voters in different constituencies. The party had expressed apprehension that voters in Bengal would be denied their right to vote with the duplication of the numbers.
“We are asking the Election Commission to tell us how many duplicate cards exist. They are the constitutional authority and we respect the body. We have genuine concerns. If they have not been able to clear this in two decades, how will they sanitise the list in three months,” asked O’Brien.
https://www.telegraphindia.com/india/ec-says-will-address-decades-long-issue-of-duplicate-voter-id-card-numbers-within-next-three-months/cid/
Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee, in a party meeting in Kolkata, had called out the CEC Gyanesh Kumar as Union Home minister Amit Shah’s “man” and accused the EC of lending its support to what she called the BJP’s manipulation of electoral rolls in Haryana, Maharashtra and Delhi, and trying to attempt the same in Bengal ahead of next year’s Assembly polls.
Leader of Opposition in the Bengal Assembly and BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari had lodged a complaint with the CEC against Mamata’s comments.
