Kolkata: Despite Election Commission‘s claims of publishing clean electoral rolls, the list published on Saturday was not “error-free”, Congress, CPM and SUCI said, claiming several discrepancies. The parties also demanded an assembly-wise machine-readable list of the names of voters under adjudication.Showing the death certificate of a voter, state Congress president Subhankar Sarkar said at a press conference: “In Bhowanipore assembly segment, we spotted the name of a dead voter in the electoral roll.” He also highlighted the name of an alive voter from Naihati who had been marked “dead” and her name deleted from rolls. “If this was the performance of the EC, we are not sure how they will prepare the supplementary lists. Nearly 1.8 lakh applications are pending for Form 6 and Form 6A. More than 5.4 lakh Form 7s are being considered by EC now,” Sarkar added.Citing the example of former MP Tarun Mandal, who was summoned for SIR hearings, SUCI said in a statement: “The name of his wife, Mahua Nanda Mandal, is under adjudication. There are 60 lakh such names which are being scrutinised. Many of them feel threatened.”CPM’s Sujan Chakraborty said EC should immediately release the names of voters under adjudication, in a booth-wise machine-readable format. “The poor and marginalised section often faces trouble with physical documentation. SIR eliminates them from the electoral process. Whether they are Hindu or Muslim, the marginalised seem to be the victims of the process this time. It is an onslaught against them,” Chakraborty said.He went on to allege that the controversy during SIR was deliberately stoked to intimidate people and keep them engaged. “It gives governing dispositions scope to shift the focus from core issues of life and livelihood,” Chakraborty said.
