Flawed system causing havoc: Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose’s grandnephew slams SIR

Anirban Bhaumik Kolkata, DHNS

Kolkata: The grandnephew of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose has described the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls in West Bengal as a "flawed" process, after he had to appear before Election Commission officials appointed to defend his right to remain on the rolls.

Chandra Kumar Bose, the grandson of Subhash Chandra Bose’s elder brother Sarat Chandra Bose, countered the EC’s claim that he had been served the notice because he had left a key column on the enumeration form given to him.

“A flawed system, done in a hurried manner, without proper training of the staff, is causing havoc!” Chandra, who was with the BJP till a couple of years ago, said. 

He almost lent his support to the ruling Trinamool Congress, which alleged that the “unplanned, arbitrary and ad hoc” exercise, launched by the EC, at the behest of the BJP, had resulted in harassment for people of West Bengal.

“I had no issue that I was called for the hearing, but I do have an issue seeing voters who are aged standing in the queue and falling sick,” he posted on X on Tuesday.

He is among many eminent personalities who have received notices from the EC. The others include Nobel-laureate economist Amartya Sen, Bengali film star Dev, cricketer Mohammed Shami, industrialist Swapan Sadhan Basu, and eminent litterateur Joy Goswami.

The EC claimed that Chandra had been served notice because, while filling up the SIR enumeration form, he had not filled the column where a voter had to give the details about their enrolment in the 2002 rolls.

“Neither did I make a mistake nor leave the column to link 2002 vacant without a reason. The list provided by EC of 2002 SIR did not reflect my name at the time of filling up the 'Enumeration Form'. I was therefore asked to leave it vacant,” he said.

“Later, after submission of the enumeration form, my name was found in another list of 2002 SIR. I had requested to update this information, but evidently, it was not possible."

“An efficient system could have avoided such inconvenience to the voters,” added Chandra, who had in 2016 contested, and lost, against Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, in the Bhowanipore assembly constituency, on a BJP ticket. In 2019, he lost to TMC’s Mala Roy in the Dakshin Kolkata parliamentary seat.

The EC struck off over 58 lakh voters and cut down the size of the electorate from 7.66 crore at the beginning of the year to 7.08 crore in the draft list.

In the second phase of the SIR, which started on December 27, 1.67 crore voters under scrutiny are being summoned for hearings, including 1.36 crore flagged for “logical discrepancies” and 31 lakh whose current electoral roll details did not match or link to the records from the 2002 voter list. The number of voters with logical discrepancies, however, subsequently came down to 94.49 lakh.

The TMC has been criticising the EC for harassing people in the name of the SIR.

Swapan Dasgupta, a former BJP member in the Rajya Sabha, was also served a notice for a SIR hearing.

“The entire clarification process was extremely smooth & took barely 15 minutes (including 10 minutes waiting). The staff was courteous & thorough. I really don’t know what the fuss is all about,” Dasgupta posted on X. “And since when is a name on the rolls accompanied by the person’s biodata? How is AI supposed to weed out the notables from the hoipolloi, as the sceptics are demanding? We want a perfect democracy, but are unwilling to do our basic Constitutional duty,” he said, tacitly dismissing the criticism against the EC for sending notices to the likes of Chandra and Sen.