The Election Commission of India (ECI) has commenced the training of election officers for special intensive revision of electoral rolls in Bengal amid a “strong words of caution” from the Trinamool Congress against a “single deletion of name from the voters’ list.” About 3,500 officials including Electoral Registration Officers (ERO) and Assistant EROs joined the training programme launched by State Chief Election Officer Manoj Kumar Agarwal on the first day on Tuesday, election officials said adding among those present in the programme were Additional District Magistrates, Sub-divisional Magistrates, District Electoral Officers, Officers in-charge. The ECI had asked the all officials of all 294 assembly constituencies to get ready for the SIR as the exercise of conducting it would commence soon after the Durga Puja festivals “which means it could begin sometime after the Laxmi Puja on October 6 which is a State holiday” officials said adding preparations were likely to be completed by Sept 30. The Commission had already started training the booth level officers (BLOs) earlier which is likely to be completed by Sept 25. The booth level agents of the various political parties were also being trained, sources said.
Even as the State CEO wrote in a social media post that “the DEOs, ADMs, OCs & other election officials in all districts were trained on the upcoming SIR,” the TMC leadership came out with a “firm and stirn word of caution,” asking the ECI to cautiously conduct the SIR because “Bengal is a very sensitive issue.” Former TMC MP and party spokesperson Kunal Ghosh cautioned the ECI saying, “we don’t mind conducting SIR — though our Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has already said that ideally it should take at least two years to do the work and it is not possible to conduct such an exercise in a matter of a few months,” adding, “we are only concerned about no name getting deleted unlawfully from the voters’ list … in case of illegal deletions as it happened in Bihar then our leadership has already said what it will do.” Earlier TMC national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee had warned that “if a single name is deleted from the voters’ list we will take one lakh people from Bengal and gherao the Election Commission of India office in Delhi … we will make you see the consequence of such wrongful acts.” Curiously Banerjee who is also the nephew of the Chief Minister had won the 2024 parliamentary elections from Diamond Harbour seat by record 7.5 lakh votes.
The BJP was planning a large-scale deletion of names from voters’ lists by using the ECI, Ghosh said asking the election officials to “discharge their duties honestly and sincerely without being politically influenced.” Incidentally the Chief Minister on Tuesday had during an administrative programme questioned the ECI decision to make parental birth certificates an essential requisite in the SIR process. “When most of us were born in our homes, I don’t have a birth certificate … if that be so then how our parents will have birth certificates when I came to power only about 60 percent of people were covered, now I think 99 percent of them have been issued birth certificates,” she said. Bengal Opposition Leader Suvendu Adhikari on the other hand said that the “BJP will stand up to the cause of cleansing of the voters’ list and will not allow Bangladeshi Muslims and Rohingyas to take part in polling exercise.” reminding the TMC leadership that “Delhi is not Bengal and it will not be easy to gherao the ECI office, those who will go will to commit any mischief will land up in jails.”
He had earlier said that “while in Bihar the ECI has dug out 65 lakh fake names in Bengal it is far more than that, there could be more than 1 crore fake voters mostly Rohingyas and Bangladeshi Muslims … we will not rest until these names are deleted from the voters’ lists.” Meanwhile former Congress MP Adhir Chowdhury too has demanded a thorough cleansing of the voters’ lists saying “we will not tolerate a single ghost voter so that some parties and candidates can win elections by a margin of several lakh of votes.”