Ex-TMC councillor, his family’s names ‘missing from EC’s updated 2002 voter list’

Kolkata: Former TMC councillor Tapas Dasgupta from Khardah, North 24-Parganas — first elected as a Congress councillor in 1995 and later on a Trinamool ticket in 2000 — alleged that while his and his family’s names were in the 2002 SIR electoral rolls, they are missing from the latest (2002) list uploaded by the Election Commission (EC).

Having contested multiple elections, Dasgupta questioned how he could have done so if his name was absent from the 2002 rolls.

Earlier, it was alleged that the name of Councillor Ashok Rudra, along with those of his family members, was missing from the 2002 voters’ list of the Hirapur Assembly constituency (now Asansol South). Rudra is the councillor of Ward No. 78 of

Asansol Municipal Corporation (AMC) and a former state president of the Trinamool Congress Chhatra Parishad.

The TMC alleged that the BJP, in collusion with the EC, has deliberately removed names from the 2002 electoral rolls. TMC already asserted that a massive movement will be organised outside the office of the ECI in Delhi if even one genuine voter’s name is removed while implementing SIR.

TMC spokesperson Kunal Ghosh had claimed that the party had detected glaring irregularities between the 2002 voter list and the one recently uploaded on the Commission’s website.

He alleged that the manipulation was being orchestrated from the BJP’s offices “in connivance” with sections of the poll panel.