TMC for door-to-door scrutiny after 45,000 voters deleted from Mamata's assembly seat

Kolkata, Dec 16 (PTI) The TMC leadership has decided to instruct party booth-level agents (BLAs) to carry out fresh, door-to-door scrutiny of deleted voters' names in Bhabanipur, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's assembly constituency, after nearly 45,000 electors were struck off from the draft electoral rolls under the SIR exercise, party sources said on Tuesday.

The party held a meeting of local leadership in Bhabanipur segment during the day.

According to Election Commission data, Bhabanipur had 2, 06,295 voters as of January 2025. The draft rolls now carry 1,61,509 names, indicating that 44,787 voters, nearly 21.7 per cent of the electorate, have been deleted.

The TMC is miffed that a large number of voters had been marked as "dead", "shifted" or "absent" by the Commission.

"The party leadership made it clear that no valid voter's name should be deleted under any circumstances. Every deleted name must be physically verified," a TMC source said.

Bhabanipur comprises Kolkata Municipal Corporation wards 63, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 77 and 82. Party sources said wards 70, 72 and 77 recorded particularly high deletions, with ward 77, a minority-dominated area, flagged for special attention during the scrutiny.

Bhabanipur, a dense urban constituency, has a sizeable population of residents originally from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Odisha.

With the hearing process on claims and objections expected to begin shortly, the party has directed local leadership to stand by affected voters during verification.

The TMC asked local units to continue running the neighbourhood-level "May I Help You" camps to assist people with documentation, form-filling and hearings, and said volunteers should visit homes if required.

The meeting was attended by senior leaders along with councillors and senior party leaders.

The developments in Bhabanipur come amid widespread deletions across south Kolkata.

Draft rolls show that four politically high-profile assembly segments -- Bhabanipur, Kolkata Port, Ballygunge and Rashbehari -- together recorded over 2.16 lakh deletions, nearly 24 per cent of their combined electorate. When the SIR process began, these seats together had around 9.07 lakh voters. PTI PNT NN