BJP following Delhi, Maharashtra model in West Bengal to tamper voter roll, alleges TMC

Kolkata: The Trinamool Congress (TMC) on Tuesday raised its pitch against the Election Commission (EC) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) over the alleged collusion between the two for enrolling people from Rajasthan, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, and Haryana in the electoral rolls of West Bengal to ensure an edge for the saffron party in the West Bengal assembly elections.

The TMC supremo and the state’s chief minister, Mamata Banerjee, wrote to Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, “raising serious alarm over the grave conspiracy being orchestrated against the democratic rights of the people of Bengal”.

The TMC supporters claimed to have caught some BJP workers when they allegedly came to the office of the Chief Electoral Officer of West Bengal in Kolkata to submit a large number of Form 6, used to apply for inclusion in the electoral rolls, on Tuesday. The police had to intervene to prevent the heated exchange between the TMC and the BJP supporters from leading to violent clashes.

Manoj Agarwala, the CEO of the state, said that anyone could submit as many documents to any government office, like his, as she or he would want. “There could be one lakh documents or one document submitted in a day by one person. I do not have information as the head of the office about this. There is a rule,” he said, adding, “I have come to know that some Form 6s have been received by us”. He, however, also said that his office had no such software that could add or delete names from the electoral rolls.

Abhishek Banerjee, the TMC general secretary, alleged that the BJP had perfected the dirty art of voter roll tampering. “They did the warm-up in Delhi and Maharashtra. Now they are playing the real match in Bengal,” he wrote on X, adding, “In Maharashtra, 43,84,814 voters were added in 5 years, and another 40,81,229 were added in just five months. In Delhi, 4,16,648 voters were added in 4 years, and another 3,99,362 were added in just seven months.”

He alleged that the EVM (Electronic Voting Machines) was not the real tool for rigging, but it was the electoral rolls.

He posted a video on X, which, according to him, clearly showed cartons filled with fraudulent Form 6 applications being openly submitted at the office of the CEO of West Bengal, and stacked on the third floor of the office, raising serious concerns about an attempt to illegally bring in voters from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh into West Bengal’s electoral rolls.

“And it is shocking how the EC has rolled over and allowed this conspiracy. Nowhere in the Election Commission’s rules is bulk submission of Form 6 permitted. The limit is clearly capped at 50 applications per individual,” the TMC general secretary alleged.

“Yet here, thousands of forms are being submitted by just a handful of people- something that is not only a blatant violation of the rules but also strikes at the very foundation of a free and fair electoral process.”

Mamata alleged that while over 60 lakh genuine voters of West Bengal remained in the “under adjudication” after the Special Intensive Revision of the electoral rolls in the state, and more than 200 lives have already been lost due to the flawed revision process, the EC was now suspiciously rushing to entertain fraudulent applications submitted in large numbers behind closed doors.

“This is not only illegal and against the orders of the Hon’ble Supreme Court, but a direct assault on free and fair elections in Bengal,” the TMC supremo said.

In her letter to the CEC, the TMC supremo stressed that the EC should immediately stop the “undemocratic exercise”, strictly follow the Supreme Court’s directions, and not add any fake voter after the final electoral roll was published on February 28. “Bengal will not allow its democracy to be stolen in broad daylight. The people of Bengal are watching.”

The chief minister slammed the EC and the BJP at multiple election rallies in Paschim Medinipur and Bankura on Tuesday.

The TMC has already been running a campaign against the EC over the past several months, alleging that the poll panel had carried out the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls in the state to ensure an edge for the BJP and that a large number of genuine voters had been deleted from the rolls to manipulate the results of the assembly polls.