Kolkata: Leader of the Opposition in West Bengal Assembly, Suvendu Adhikari, on Tuesday accused the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) of pressuring booth level officers (BLOs) involved in the ongoing special intensive revision (SIR) not to delete names of dead voters from electoral roll.
Adhikari posted a purported screenshot of a WhatsApp chat and an audio clip of a conversation as proof for his claim. The authenticity of them could not be independently verified by HT. The office of the state’s chief electoral officer (CEO) did not comment on Adhikari’s claims.
The purported conversation appeared to have taken place after Subrata Gupta, the special roll observer sent from Delhi by the Election Commission of India (ECI), visited the Palta area of South 24 Parganas district on November 30 to hold a meeting with around 100 BLOs. Gupta also met representatives of the TMC, BJP, Left and Congress parties.
In the audio clip, a man could purportedly be heard telling another person that Gupta told the BLOs that a voter should be marked as dead in their records in the absence of a death certificate, if the person’s family declares him/her dead in a signed enumeration form.
The man also purportedly said that community block development officers (BDOs) later instructed the BLOs not to strike off any voter from the electoral roll as long as these families don’t produce death certificates.
“When this instruction was given to the BLOs, Jahangir was sitting in the adjacent room with his men. Jahangir’s men are telling voters not to provide any death certificates,” the speaker purportedly said.
The screenshot of the WhatsApp chat Adhikari posted said death cases cannot be reported in the ECI’s phone app in the absence of death certificates and the same will also apply to voters who have shifted.
“You will be informed what to do when further instructions are received,” showed the screenshot of the purported chat.
Adhikari said in his post on X that these are happening in the Joynagar and Kultali assembly segments in South 24 Parganas district.
“I request the ECI to probe these and take required action,” Adhikari wrote.
Neither the person in the audio clip nor Adhikari clarified who Jahangir was. The clip also did not mention any political party.
TMC state vice-president Jay Prakash Majumdar countered Adhikari, saying that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader was pretending to be unaware of the rules.
“The leader of the Opposition is pretending to be unaware of the ECI’s rules, which say that a voter can be marked as dead only if there is a death certificate. This is mandatory. The ECI has recently said that in case a death certificate is not available, the information about a voter’s death has to be verified from the local panchayat, municipality or corporation,” Majumdar told HT.
“A name cannot be struck off without going through the verification process,” he added.
Subrata Gupta told the media on November 30 that some complaints were being looked into but did not get into the details.
“Some complaints have been received and these are being looked into. There is no problem as such. Our goal is to address the procedural issues BLOs have raised. If needed, we will issue additional guidelines,” Gupta, an Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer who earlier served in Bengal, said at Falta.
