The voter list records of about a hundred booths from West Bengal dating back to the last Special Intensive Revision (SIR) done by the Election Commission of India (ECI) in 2002 are reportedly missing.
The 2022 electoral roll was supposed to be the reference for this year's SIR. But officials of the office of West Bengal's Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) stated that they would request approval from the ECI to use the draft voters' list of 2003 as the basis for the revision.
The sources exposed that in some of the polling booths, post-SIR 2002 records are simply not available, whereas in other booths the documents are destroyed beyond repair and cannot be uploaded to the Commission's server.
The majority of the booths where this has happened are in South 24 Parganas, Howrah, North 24 Parganas, and Birbhum — all considered to be traditional strongholds of the Trinamool Congress.
The move comes against the backdrop of increasing tensions between the ECI and the West Bengal government regarding the suspension of four election officials deputed in two Assembly constituencies. The officials were charged with fraudulently enrolling names on the electoral rolls in these constituencies.
On Monday, the state government had apprised the ECI that it would ignore the suspension order. Acting in retaliation, the Commission asked Chief Secretary Manoj Pant to report to its Delhi office at 5 p.m. on Wednesday.
All eyes are now on the meeting of Pant with officials of the ECI.
The standoff started when Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee openly defied the Commission's order imposing the ban, saying that nothing would be done against the four since they work with the state government.
The officials are accused of dereliction of duty in their roles as Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) and Assistant Electoral Registration Officers (AEROs) in handling the applications of voters and violating data protection guidelines by distributing the log-in details for the voter registration database to unauthorized parties.
If the charges are established, the accused may be imprisoned for a term of not less than three months and not more than two years, together with fines, pursuant to existing laws.
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