Names of cricketer Richa Ghosh, Bengal min, 3 MLAs 'under adjudication' category in voter list: TMC

Kolkata, Mar 1 (PTI) The TMC on Sunday charged the EC with carrying out a "silent invisible rigging" during SIR, claiming that the names of Indian cricketer Richa Ghosh, West Bengal minister Md Ghulam Rabbani and three other party MLAs have been placed "under adjudication" category in the final roll.

In posts on X, the party said Ghosh, a member of India's ICC Women's World Cup-winning squad, was marked "under adjudication" in the voter list published on February 28.

"The farce of @BJP4India and @ECISVEEP's silent invisible rigging reaches new lows of absurdity. A World Cup-winning star like Richa Ghosh, Bengal's pride, India's hero, the wicketkeeper-batter who donned the blue jersey and brought glory to the nation, has now been placed 'under adjudication' in the final electoral rolls," the party said in an X post.

The TMC said Ghosh represented India overseas with distinction and earned every Bengali's admiration. The 22-year-old wicketkeeper-batter from Siliguri was a member of India's 2025 ICC Women's World Cup-winning team.

It said she "is forced to endure this humiliating scrutiny, her name flagged, her voter status questioned, her democratic right dangling by a thread in this voter purge".

"When even celebrities and national icons can be arbitrarily targeted, questioned, and subjected to this degrading process, what hope for the common Bengali voter?" the party asked, drawing parallels between prominent figures like Ghosh and common people also clubbed under the same category following the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls.

"This is systematic humiliation engineered to disenfranchise, to silence, to erase Bengal's voice one name at a time," it said.

The party said four sitting MLAs -- Rabbani, Rafiqur Rahaman, Toraf Hossain Mandal and Swati Khandoker -- have similarly been placed under the same category.

The party said Birbhum Zilla Parishad Sabhadhipati Kajal Sheikh and his mother have also been put under adjudication.

It further claimed that Naihati Municipality councillor Sushanta Sarkar and his mother were "deleted outright" from the rolls, while several other party functionaries faced similar issues ranging from deletion to adjudication.

The EC has not yet responded to the allegations. PTI SUS RG ACD