Renowned Bengali poet Joy Goswami summoned for SIR hearing

Kolkata: Renowned Bengali poet Joy Goswami has been summoned by the Election Commission for a hearing in connection with the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls, his family said on Wednesday.

Goswami, a Sahitya Akademi Award-winning poet, has undergone surgeries recently and is unwell, his daughter Devarti said.

She said her 74-year-old father was asked to appear for the SIR hearing on January 2.

Devarti said all the family members had duly filled and submitted the enumeration forms on time.

She said both she and her father were ‘unmapped’ voters as their names did not figure on the 2002 list.

"Some information and documents have been sought from my father. Given his current health condition, it does not seem possible for him to attend the hearing. I will go with the required documents and information on the day of the hearing," Devatri said.

However, Goswami has been voting regularly for the past several years.

An Election Commission official later said they have spoken to Goswami's family over the phone and assured them of full cooperation.

The development comes amid complaints that elderly voters have fallen ill while standing in the queue during hearings conducted as part of the SIR process in West Bengal.

Incidentally, the poll panel has issued a notification stating that voters aged above 85 or those who are seriously ill will be heard at their residences.

Meanwhile, TMC leader and state Education Minister Bratya Basu said, "It is beyond imagination that a poet like Joy Goswami, who had been voting in Bengal for years and is known nationally as a foremost poet, can be summoned for the hearing." Basu, also a noted actor and playwright, said in jest that had Rabindranath Tagore been alive, “who knows they would have summoned him too for a hearing”.