Trinamool flags voter list mismatch, seeks upload of original 2002 rolls
Kolkata: The Trinamool Congress (TMC) on Wednesday renewed its allegations of irregularities in the voter list, claiming a “massive mismatch” between the 2002 electoral rolls uploaded on the Chief Electoral Officer’s (CEO) official website and the hard copies available with Election Commission officials.
The ruling party alleged that in many cases the names and related data of the voters have been removed. In some cases, even the voter-related information is incomplete. In many booths, names of as many as 30-40 voters have been completely removed from the list uploaded earlier.
The ruling party in Bengal has cited an example saying that in Part Number 232 under the Bidhannagar Assembly Constituency, there were the names of 903 voters in the uploaded list of the Election Commission. But the printed list in the hands of the officials has 984 voters, as is evident from the serial numbers, Trinamool Congress alleged. It also claimed that similar discrepancies were spotted in several Assembly constituencies.
The Trinamool Congress further said that senior Cabinet minister and Madhyamgram MLA Rathin Ghosh had already apprised election officials in North 24-Parganas of the issue. The ruling party also demanded that the Election Commission immediately upload the original, unaltered 2022 voter list in its entirety.
TMC recently wrote to the state’s Chief Electoral Officer (CEO), alleging inconsistencies between the Chief Election Commissioner’s (CEC) recent statements and the written instructions issued to Booth Level Officers (BLOs) for the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in West Bengal, which it said has led to widespread confusion.
The ruling party in the state alleged that while CEC Gyanesh Kumar, during a Press conference on October 27, had said that blood relatives such as uncles could be mentioned in SIR forms, but the written instructions and software interface restrict the permissible ‘relative’ category to parents and grandparents only.
