'Vote chori' is happening on electoral rolls: TMC alleges SIR in Bengal has discrepancies

New Delhi: Insisting that ‘vote chori' is not happening through EVMs but electoral rolls, Trinamool Congress (TMC) on Wednesday accused Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar of “weaponising” voter lists while daring him to issue circulars in the implementation of Special Intensive Revision (SIR) process rather than resorting to using WhatsApp to pass instructions.

TMC National General Secretary Abhishek Banerjee, who led a ten-MP delegation to the Election Commission to raise issues related to SIR in West Bengal, recalled that Kumar was Cooperation Secretary under Amit Shah and claimed it was “no coincidence” that he was appointed as the CEC, as he was “sent on a mission to destroy” the Constitution and the poll body.

Appealing to other parties to join hands to fight electoral malpractices, he also said parties like Congress, AAP, RJD and NCP (Sharadchandra Pawar) failed to catch ‘vote chori’ and that was why the BJP “managed to win” Haryana, Delhi, Maharashtra and Bihar with a strike rate over 80 per cent.

In its response, the EC told the delegation that TMC should ensure that their ground representatives are not involved in threatening any staff while warning that intimidation of any electoral staff, including BLOs, EROs, AEROs and Observers, by party workers will not be tolerated. It asked the Bengal government to immediately release the enhanced honorarium to each BLOs. 

After the nearly two-and-half hour meeting, Banerjee told reporters that there are discrepancies in the SIR in Bengal and the EC was not giving clear answers or commitments to their questions and demands. He said the EC has refused to provide a list of voters who are marked as having submitted enumeration forms with “logical discrepancies”.

“Vote chori is not happening in EVM. It is happening on electoral rolls…What is the ECI trying to hide?...How can you clean a list by hiding details?...What algorithms and software are being run to disenfranchise and remove 50 lakh to one crore voters (in various states)? If this is not happening, then release the list of 1.36 crore voters with logical discrepancies,” he said.

He claimed that voters who have submitted documents and cleared during the exercise were called for hearing, to which the EC responded that there could be technical flaws in the App. 

To a question whether the TMC would accept the final electoral roll after the SIR is completed, he said why should they accept the list if it has discrepancies while adding that they would fight legally.

When the EC objected to BLA-2 of parties being present in hearing of voters, Banerjee said he pointed out that if BLA-2 can sit in polling stations, why cannot they sit during hearings. He said they asked the EC issue a circular, which he claimed Kumar declined.

“Instructions are being given on WhatsApp. Governments function through circulars and notifications. Does the union government and the EC want to run the country through WhatsApp? What is stopping them from issuing circulars? 

He said their queries on the SIR were “repeatedly diverted” to citizenship issues while concerns on deletions were met with procedural responses such as filling Form 7, without any concrete explanation.

Banerjee said they sought a clarification on how many of the nearly 58 lakh names deleted from the draft list were Rohingya or Bangladeshi nationals but no data was provided. 

The delegation also questioned the selective deployment of micro-observers in West Bengal, which had the least proportion of deletions and claimed that it was intended to malign the image of Bengal.