Didi's Fresh Plea To CEC Against Voters' Deletion In SIR
Ms Banerjee then pointed out “serious errors” in the voters' details due to A.I. based digitisation of the 2002 SIR list
Kolkata: In a fresh letter to Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Monday sought remedy of two “serious procedural lapses” which, she alleged, have been causing “undue harassment” and “wrongful deletion” of the voters at the hearing stage in the special intensive revision (SIR).
One of the two issues is about voters' document submissions to prove their identity and eligibility. The CM wrote, “...in several cases, no proper acknowledgment or receipt is being issued for the documents submitted. Subsequently, at the stage of verification or hearing, these documents are reported as ‘not found’ or ‘not available on record,’ and on that basis, names of electors are being deleted from the electoral rolls.”
Calling the procedure “fundamentally flawed and untenable”, she also claimed, “The non-issuance of documentary acknowledgment deprives electors of proof of submission and places them at the mercy of internal record-keeping deficiencies.”
Ms Banerjee then pointed out “serious errors” in the voters' details due to A.I. based digitisation of the 2002 SIR list. “These errors have resulted in large-scale data mismatches, leading to many genuine voters being categorised as logical discrepancies,” she underlined.
Referring to the corrections of the voters’ details with valid government-issued documents in the last 23 years and their incorporations in the current electoral roll, the Trinamul Congress supremo argued, “The Commission is now disregarding its own statutory processes followed consistently over two decades and is compelling electors to once again establish their identity and eligibility.”
She wondered, “Such an approach-disowning its own actions and mechanisms spanning more than two decades-is arbitrary, illogical and contrary to the letter and spirit of the Constitution of India. Why should the process revert to 2002? Does this imply that all revisions carried out over the intervening years were illegal?”
Further, Ms Banerjee accused the EC of “deviating” from its order on October 27 last year by summoning the voters for hearings over “a large number of discrepancy cases” involving “minor variations” in their details. She suggested the poll officials at the booth level and above resolve the issue without summoning the voters.
“All these voters who are being issued hearing notices are already mapped with 2002 electoral roll, by themselves or through progeny, so there is no need of issuing hearing notices in such cases,” the CM added.
