Standing outside her house, 43-year-old Rashida Bibi of Tara Hadia village in Bhangar says she is clueless about what to do now. While all her family members figure in the voter list prepared after the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in West Bengal, she has just found out that her name is among those deleted after the adjudication process.
In some respects, she is among the lucky ones — at least she knows her status. Two days after the Election Commission said it had prepared its first Supplementary List of voters after adjudication, there is no clarity on who and how many have been deleted.
While the EC declared that it would put up lists of “deletions” and “inclusions” at polling booths, it hasn’t done so.
Booth No. 49 in Bhagabanpur area of Bhangar Assembly constituency is among the rare ones where the Booth a Level Officer (BLO) of the EC has accessed the list — and Rashida’s name does not figure in it. In this booth, six names out of 103 that were under adjudication have been “deleted” – all six are women, and five from the minority community.
In nearby Booth No. 50 of the same constituency, where the ‘Supplementary List’ has also been accessed by the BLO, five names have been “deleted” of the 65 under adjudication – all are from the minority community and four are women.
The Indian Express met all of those “deleted” in these two booths.
Deepening the confusion is the EC silence on the numbers deleted. Different estimates are being trotted out. One EC official pegged the deletions at “nearly 40%” of the “32 lakh names” adjudicated so far — that works out to a total of 13 lakh names.
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Sonamoni, whose name was removed post-adjudication from rolls, at her Bhangar home. (Experss photo by Ravik Bhattacharya)
Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said in a poll speech Wednesday that there were “8 lakh” deletions in the “27 lakh” names for whose adjudication had been done. Her opponent from Bhabanipur constituency and bitter rival Suvendu Adhikari of the BJP put the number at “14 lakh” out of “32 lakh”.
The EC also said Monday that all the 60 lakh voters whose names were shortlisted for adjudication, can log onto its website and check their details. At his press conference where he said that “29 lakh” cases under adjudication had been disposed of, Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Manoj Agarwal announced this.
However, that has also been a source of confusion. On Tuesday night, less than 24 hours after the EC said it had cleared the first Supplementary List, the poll panel’s online portal showed almost all the voters of Bengal – including those who had been cleared by the SIR earlier – as “under adjudication”.
After many hours of anxiety, the EC said Wednesday that this was “a technical glitch”. An EC official said: “A technical error caused the issue, possibly related to the server or backend integration. We are finding out what caused it, but the issue has been taken care of.” Admitting that “at one point, the system reflected that all electors in the state were under adjudication”, the official said: “It was purely a display error.”
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At Booth No. 49 of Bhangar constituency, there were 1,252 voters before the SIR. Of them, 64 were deleted earlier from the electoral list as dead or shifted, and six now find themselves out after adjudication.
Booth No. 50 had 584 voters at the start of the SIR. The total fell to 527, after those “deceased” and “shifted” were deleted, and now five more are out.
Purnima Ghosh, 40, who is among those deleted from the voter list of Booth No. 49, keeps breaking down. All her other family members, including her mother-in-law, husband, brother-in-law and his wife, figure in the electoral roll.
She says even her father’s name was in the 2002 SIR, which should have automatically led to her inclusion in the voter list. “I gave all the details of that during my hearing. But yesterday I came to know from the local BLO that my name has been deleted.”
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Ghosh adds: “My 14-year-old daughter has been asking since yesterday, ‘What will we do now?’. I have no answer. I have heard that we have to appeal to the court (a tribunal).”
Sonamoni Khatun, 32, who is also among those deleted in Booth No. 49, says the fact that she is one of seven siblings would have raised a red flag – the EC called those who had six or more children for a hearing. “However, my brothers and sisters submitted the same documents as me, including details of my father whose name was in the 2002 electoral roll, and all their names have been included,” Sonamoni says.
Her neighbour Romicha Bibi also figures among the deleted after adjudication. She says: “I have been voting since 2006. I can’t even remember how many times.”
BLO of Booth No. 49 Md Abed Ali Mollah (39) is equally confused, particularly as he cleared all these papers from his side two months ago. In an exception for West Bengal, the names cleared by election officers were put through another round of checking by specially appointed micro-observers.
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“We have forgotten everything now. At the time, we worked till midnight… 2 am. I handed over the papers of all voters personally. Even after that, I have not been able to stop the deletion of six voters,” Mollah says.
A Booth Level Agent of the ruling Trinamool Congress at Booth No. 50, Soaib Sanpui, says: “In our booth, one person has 11 children. Nine of them were marked under adjudication, seven have been included, but two – Haram Ali Sanpui (37) and Tanuja Bibi (45) – have been deleted. We don’t have any reason for this.”
Haram and Tanuja’s father Motaleb Sanpui, 75, says: “My name has been on the voter list since the 1970s. When all my children have been included, what is the fault of these two?”
Says Tanuja: “I submitted all the documents including my father’s name in SIR 2002, and his identity proof… We don’t have money to go to court and challenge this decision.”
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In the CM’s constituency of Bhabanipur, where it is a contest between her and Adhikari, details of post-adjudication lists of only 42 booths out of 267 are known. “We tried to download the Supplementary List of the booths, but failed,” says a local TMC leader.
In the constituency, the total number of voters before the SIR was 2.06 lakh. There were 50,094 deletions during the SIR, and around 14,000 had been put under adjudication.
TMC spokesperson Arup Chakraborty called the unending confusion over the SIR an “organised offence” by the EC. “The BJP’s target community is Muslim and women, and they are deleting the lead the TMC had last time.”
CPI(M) Central Committee member Sujan Chakraborty said, “The EC’s duty is to safeguard the rights of electors. Here, it is deleting the names of genuine voters.”
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BJP Bengal vice-president Jagannath Chattopadhyay said the TMC government had itself to blame for the confusion and “chaos”.
With the tribunals that will hear any challenges now still to be set up, CEO Agarwal told mediapersons Tuesday: “We are trying to work as soon as possible. We have sought office space from the state government.”
Tanuja Bibi of Booth No. 50, Bhangar, meanwhile, voices the fear filling the gap: “If I am driven away from my country, what will I do?”