EC's delay in publishing list of voters with logical discrepancy draws flak from Abhishek Banerjee

Kolkata: The Trinamool Congress has questioned the credibility of the software used by the Election Commission for the Special Intensive Revision of the electoral rolls in West Bengal, criticising the poll panel for the delay in displaying the lists of the voters flagged for logical discrepancies by Saturday.

“What exactly is the EC trying to hide?” Abhishek Banerjee, the general secretary of the Trinamool Congress, posted on X, referring to the delay on the part of the poll panel in complying with the January 19 order of the Supreme Court. He lashed out at the EC, even as the Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar claimed in a statement that the ongoing SIR of the electoral rolls in the 12 States and Union Territories was going on “smoothly”.

“Is the @ECISVEEP looking for LOGIC or hiding the DISCREPANCIES?” Abhishek posted on X.

The Supreme Court had ordered the EC to publish the lists of the voters flagged for logical discrepancies. The EC on January 21 wrote to the Chief Electoral Officer of West Bengal, setting Saturday, January 24, as the deadline for displaying the lists of the voters who had been flagged for logical discrepancies after the publication of the draft electoral rolls at the end of the enumeration phase of the revision exercise on December 16.

The commission also asked for the display of the lists of the ‘unmapped’ voters – the ones whose names or the names of their parents could not be mapped with the final electoral rolls prepared after the previous exercise in 2002.

The EC asked the CEO of West Bengal to get the lists displayed “in the Gram Panchayats Bhavans, public places in every Taluka and Block Office of every Taluka, as well as the ward offices of the cities in the urban areas”.

But, due to the delay in providing the Booth Level Officers with the required software, the CEO’s office in Kolkata was late in complying with the EC’s directive.

“The same software that allegedly assessed and analysed over seven crore enumeration forms and miraculously detected ‘logical discrepancies’ within an hour on December 16, immediately after the draft rolls were published, now seems to have lost its logic, speed, credibility and confidence,” Abhishek, the heir apparent of the Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, said on Saturday.

Sources said that the lists would be displayed across the state from Sunday.

“Despite a clear order from the SC and its own formal communication, the @ECISVEEP has failed to release and publish the list of LOGICAL DISCREPANCIES that it was mandated to publish by the 24th January in all Gram Panchayats and municipal wards,” he wrote on X

“If DISCREPANCIES could be identified in one hour, why does it take days to DISCLOSE them?” added Abhishek.