Left parties to hold march to West Bengal CEO’s office demanding correct voter list

CPI(M) West Bengal State secretary Mohammed Salim said that Left parties will organise a march to the West Bengal Chief Electoral Officer’s (CEO) office on Wednesday, demanding publication of a correct voter list before the upcoming assembly elections.

Citing large-scale harassment of the people because of the exercise, he claimed on Tuesday that the “Nirbachan (Election) Commission” has turned into a “Nirjatan (Torture) Commission”.

The ECI published the post-SIR rolls on February 28, recording 63.66 lakh deletions, 8.3 per cent of the electorate, reducing the voter base to just over 7.04 crore ahead of the assembly polls. More than 60.06 lakh electors have also been placed in the “under adjudication” category, subject to scrutiny in the coming weeks.

“In the name of intensive revision of the voter list, a concerted conspiracy has taken place,” Salim said, addressing a press conference at the CPI(M) office in PurbaBardhaman district.

The CPI(M) leader stated that the constituents of the Left Front will hold a march to the CEO’s office in Kolkata on Wednesday, demanding that the ECI publish a correct voter list before the assembly elections in West Bengal.

He claimed that the ECI, the authority responsible for ensuring free and fair elections, has made the SIR process complex and brought about tensions in the minds of a large number of people.

Salim maintained that there was no need for the SIR, while demanding that the ECI ensure that the names of genuine voters are not deleted from the electoral rolls.

Alleging harassment of people in the name of logical discrepancy in the SIR process in West Bengal, he stated that this could have been largely avoided if the State Government had standardised name spellings by passing a resolution in the assembly.

The CPI(M) leader claimed that important issues affecting the general public, such as education and healthcare, etc have been pushed to the back burner by both the Trinamool Congress and the BharatiyaJanata Party (BJP) through shadow boxing over religious issues.