Will seek list of voters flagged for 'logical discrepancies' during Dec 31 meet with CEC: Abhishek

Kolkata, Dec 27 (PTI) Senior TMC leader Abhishek Banerjee on Saturday said he would meet Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar on December 31 and urge him to publish the list of 1.31 crore voters who have been flagged for "logical discrepancies" during the SIR exercise.

Addressing a press conference in Kolkata, Banerjee said he would give a timeframe to the EC to publish the list and would gherao its office if the demand is not met.

"I will go to Delhi on December 31 and meet the chief election commissioner and seek an answer. Why is the EC not coming out with the list of names? Is this figure meant to reach the target of 1-1.5 crore that the BJP has set for deletions of names following the SIR in Bengal," he asked.

"Gyanesh Kumar is the chief election commissioner, and he is answerable to the people of the country," he added.

In the draft rolls, published on December 16, around 1.36 crore entries have also been flagged for "logical discrepancies", while 30 lakh voters were categorised as unmapped, who are being called for verification hearings over the next few weeks, according to officials.

"Logical discrepancies" flagged include incorrect or mismatched fathers’ names, voters recorded with more than six children, implausible age differences with parents or grandparents, and people above 45 wrongly shown as “new voters”, among others, they said.

Taking a dig at the BJP and EC in the same breath, the three-term MP from Diamond Harbour also sought to know how many illegal Bangladeshi and Rohingya immigrants were among the 58.20 lakh voters whose names have been dropped from the draft electoral rolls.

He said that West Bengal's population is 10.05 crore, and the names of only 5.79 per cent of the population have been deleted.

"This is the lowest among all the states where SIR is being held," he said.

Alleging that West Bengal was being targeted selectively since the TMC won the 2021 assembly polls, he claimed that the "agenda is to harass the people of the state".

The TMC leader, who is the nephew of CM Mamata Banerjee, claimed that EC had stated that around 50 per cent of voter data could not be mapped in West Bengal, but official figures showed that around 89 per cent of the voter data had been mapped.

"Then why should not the EC apologise to the people of Bengal?" he asked as the hearing of 'unmapped' voters commenced in the state.

The TMC leader said there are several instances where hearty and healthy people have been shown as dead in the draft rolls.

"Why should FIR not be registered against the EC? You are trying to win by way of SIR. People will give their response by registering FIR," he said.

Banerjee also questioned why SIR was not happening in the Northeastern states that share a border with Bangladesh.

"If Bangladeshis are there in Bengal, which shares borders with Bangladesh, why is SIR not being done in states like Tripura and Meghalaya, which also share borders with Bangladesh?" he asked.

He also questioned the EC on the deployment of micro-observers for the SIR hearings in West Bengal.

"Why were they not sent to states such as UP, Gujarat or Tamil Nadu, where the number of deletions of names is the highest," he asked. PTI AMR SOM