NEW DELHI: ‘As long as BJP is there, no Indian Hindu and Indian Muslim have to fear about their name being stripped off from the voter list,’ a confident Bengal BJP president Samik Bhattacharya signs off when asked by TOI Online about the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in the state. His assurance comes at a time when senior members of the INDIA alliance have questioned the SIR process, with SP chief Akhilesh Yadav repeating the charge even on Bihar election result day. In a sharply worded post on X, Akhilesh said the opposition has understood EC’s ‘khel’ with SIR and will not allow it to be repeated in states like Tamil Nadu, West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh. In Bengal, the ruling TMC remains on alert over the roll clean-up even as legal challenges are mounted against it in the Supreme Court. With enumeration forms almost fully distributed, all eyes are now on the draft rolls due on December 9, to be published after about 80,000 Block Level Officers (BLOs) finish collecting forms from over 7.6 crore voters and upload them to the EC app by December 4.SIR is the EC’s exercise to clean up electoral rolls ahead of next year’s assembly polls. The BJP predicts SIR will delete at least one crore ‘illegals’ from the voter list; the TMC has issued a battle cry to ensure no genuine voter is excluded, with chief minister Mamata Banerjee calling it ‘silent, invisible rigging’ by the EC at the behest of the BJP.
‘Cry of the losers’
When quizzed about Akhilesh’s claim and the broader Congress campaign around ‘Vote Chori’, Samik Bhattacharya was categorical in rejecting it, dubbing it the ‘cry of the losers’. TMC, too, is hesitant to dismiss the Bihar election results as entirely the handiwork of SIR. Speaking to TOI Online, TMC spokesperson Dr Riju Datta said that once elections are over, there is little point crying over them. Hence, he says, the party has hit the ground running, setting up ‘Banglar vote raksha’ camps in all blocks across the state and deploying workers to help voters fill in forms and assemble documents. According to Riju, Abhishek Banerjee will now undertake a whirlwind statewide tour from 25th November to keep the cadre energised for the final stretch. TMC spokesperson also reminds that before Rahul Gandhi raised the issue of ‘vote chori’, Mamata had already highlighted discrepancies and manipulation in electoral rolls. Bengal has around 22 lakh migrants who are working in other states. TMC is ensuring that all those workers and their families get their enumeration form filled, says Samirul Islam, MP and Chairman of Migrant Workers Welfare Board, when contacted by TOI Online. In the enumeration form, voters must provide details as they appear in the electoral roll of the last SIR in 2002. If a voter was not on that roll, they must provide similar details for an immediate relative who featured in it, or establish eligibility with any one of eleven document types the EC has listed.However, not all are convinced. ‘We are poor. From where will we get the documents? Our names weren’t there in 2002.’ You hear this on suburban trains to Kolkata, from domestic workers riding in from neighbouring South 24 Parganas. Many say their families, including their forefathers, have never stepped outside Bengal, let alone migrated from another country. And then there are people who have migrated to India in the last few decades and don’t have proper documentation.
Points of contention
According to Riju, as much as half the population of Matuas and Rajbanshis, two of the largest SC communities in Bengal, do not have proper paperwork and may find their names missing from the December 9 rolls. He dubs SIR a backdoor NRC and says the legal cell under MP Kalyan Banerjee is geared up to help all those whose names are likely to be deleted in the draft rolls. While TMC dubs CAA a ‘jumla’, BJP offers it as a solution for those who may not have proper documentation after migrating to India. TMC has also challenged the constitutional legality of SIR, with an appeal currently pending in the Supreme Court, and has objected to 2002 as the cut-off year, arguing that 2009 delimitation has completely altered ward and assembly structures.Another flashpoint is EC’s move to use Aadhaar data to weed out dead voters. Bengal chief electoral officer Manoj Agarwal has gone on record saying UIDAI has already informed them of records of 32-34 lakh people who are deceased and had Aadhaar, and another 13-14 lakh dead individuals who did not have Aadhaar. EC has said this data will be matched with SIR forms to find discrepancies.TMC has strongly objected to this cross-verification. Riju Dutta points out that UIDAI had earlier informed Parliament it does not maintain any state-wise, year-wise or reason-wise data on Aadhaar deactivation. So was the UIDAI telling the truth then or is it factually correct now? That, he says, is the core question.Meanwhile, leader of the opposition in West Bengal Suvendu Adhikari has submitted a list of 13 lakh names which the BJP believes should be struck off the rolls. He has repeatedly claimed SIR will weed out ‘Muslim infiltrators’ from Bangladesh who, he alleges, are a dedicated vote bank of the ruling party in Bengal. TMC counters this by asking why the Election Commission has not provided any religion-wise break-up of people whose names were deleted in SIR in the neighbouring state. Incidentally, in Bihar, 7.89 crore voters were whittled down to 7.42 crore after completion of SIR.
‘Diversionary tactics’
The Bengal BJP for now seems unfazed by any possible fallout. According to Samik Bhattacharya, Mamata Banerjee is on her way out and raising the SIR issue is merely a diversionary tactic to deflect the heat her party is facing from ED, CBI and other probe agencies. While acknowledging that the party has not been able to provide block-level agents in all booths of Bengal, Samik sounds confident that the saffron outfit is doing enough to help people complete the formalities.The Supreme Court, in its latest hearing in the SIR case, has wondered why Tamil Nadu and West Bengal are opposing SIR. Samik refers to that observation and challenges TMC to knock on SC’s door to get its grievance heard.For the Election Commission, Bihar’s experience, with polls completed after SIR and zero appeals against the final voter rolls as claimed by CEC Gyanesh Kumar, is already being cited as proof that the model works. In Bengal, officials say the revision is proceeding smoothly. The real action, though, will begin once the draft rolls are out on December 9. TMC’s ‘Silent Invisible Rigging’ slogan, BJP’s diversionary line and the EC’s faith in its template will all meet the test of lived reality: who finds their name on the list, and who does not, just before a crucial assembly election. Go to Source