Kolkata/Diamond Harbour: This election, the urban South 24 Parganas, with Jadavpur and Tollygunge, finds itself sharing the same fate as its rural belts of Basanti and Sagar, located almost 100 km away.The electoral list has been trimmed by a whopping 10.4 lakh voters, bringing the total number of voters to 75,53,610 from the 85,94,708 before the SIR. The deletion percentage stands at 12.1%, placing it among the top 10 in the state. Deletion figures after adjudication here stands at nearly 2.2 lakh.The 31 seats in the district are crucial for Trinamool, the party having won 30 of them in 2021. The lone seat with the ISF is Bhangar.The district has 36% of minority votes, mostly concentrated in rural belts. “The deletions are similar to the trend witnessed across Bengal. The minority votes, the core Trinamool voters along with the women, have been the worst-hit. Most deletions are across Bhangar, Magrahat West and Diamond Harbour, all Muslim-majority constituencies,” said Trinamool neta Pratik Ur Rahaman.South 24 Parganas is at the top in four out of the seven categories of logical discrepancies identified by the EC. The district, they stated, led the state in the category of mismatch in father’s name, with as many as 9,33,872 forms flagged. Closer home, around 35,000-36,000-odd voters have been deleted together in Jadavpur and Tollygunge, estimated party seniors. “Many names have been deleted in Jadavpur. We are refugees from East Bengal, and we had to make the ultimate sacrifice for freedom. India’s Independence came through our blood. Today, we have to prove we are Indians,” said sitting Jadavpur MLA Debabrata Majumdar, who is contesting again on Trinamool ticket.“We ensured that voters did not lose heart when they were put on adjudication list. A large section of those under adjudication is now back on the roll,” said a close aide of Aroop Biswas in Tollygunge.Incidentally, even the BJP seems to be still calculating the impact of SIR.
