Trinamool flags irregularities in BJP’s Rahul Sinha’s Rajya Sabha nomination

Kolkata: Trinamool Congress (TMC) has written to the ECI, alleging procedural irregularities in the scrutiny of nomination papers of BJP’s Rajya Sabha candidate Rahul Sinha, and claimed that “discrepancies” in his election affidavit were overlooked by the returning officer.

TMC alleged Sinha’s Form-26 affidavit contained “suppressed information, inconsistencies and incomplete disclosures relating to financial declarations, assets, vehicles, liabilities and investments”. Sinha has, however, rejected the allegations and said all the papers and documents submitted during the nomination filing were “in order”. TMC also alleged that after the scrutiny was virtually completed, a revised affidavit was produced on March 6, which had neither been made available earlier for verification nor uploaded on the public domain.

The move amounted to “backdoor correction of information” and “violated” the spirit of Supreme Court directives mandating full and transparent disclosure of candidates’ details to voters, claimed TMC.

TMC also wrote to the state CEO alleging a lack of transparency in the publication of electoral rolls. It also pointed to a memorandum issued on February 28 regarding the publication of the final electoral roll for all 294 assembly constituencies.

“Your official notification clearly states 42,251 Form 7 submissions. Yet the final electoral rolls show 5,46,053 deletions through Form 7; an additional 5,03,802 deletions beyond what was submitted,” reads the letter to the CEO.