48 hrs after deadline, 1L voters with Banglar Bari docus face deletion

Kolkata: Forty-eight hours after SIR hearings ended in Bengal, the EC on Monday clarified that the financial assistance sanction letters under the Centre's PMAY-G and IAY, and the state govt's Banglar Bari schemes, will not be considered as SIR documents. The EC clarification came in response to a query by the office of Bengal's chief electoral officer on Jan 21.The EC's clarification came at a time when the electors could no longer submit any fresh documents. Trinamool Congress said this was a deliberate violation of apex court orders. Trinamool MP and senior lawyer Kalyan Banerjee said he will raise this issue in the SC because this decision is "arbitrary". The SC will next hear the Bengal SIR petition on Feb 20.
According to Commission sources, more than 1 lakh people submitted either the PMAY-G, IAY, or Banglar Bari schemes' financial assistance sanction letters as the only SIR document. "Now, there is no scope for uploading documents. Those who submitted documents other than the notified ones will be deleted from the final roll, and they will have to appeal to the DEO within five days from the publication of the final list. If the issue is not resolved in five days, then they can apply to the CEO," a senior Commission official said. After noticing that many electors submitted the financial assistance sanction letters of PMAY-G, IAY, or Banglar Bari schemes as the only documents during the hearing, Bengal CEO Manoj Agarwal asked the EC for clarification on this issue a month back. In response, the Commission mentioned para 6 (viii) of the Supreme Court order dated Feb 9, which stated: "The affected persons to whom notices have been served shall be entitled to rely on all or any of the documents referred to by the ECI in the SIR notice, and all such documents, including those referred to in our order dated Jan 19, shall be considered by the EROs when passing orders on the objections received in response to the notices served.""The Commission in its SIR instructions dated Oct 27 prescribed ‘Any Land/House allotment certificate by govt' as one of the indicative documents. The financial assistance sanction letters issued under schemes such as PMAY-G, IAY, Banglar Bari (Gramin), etc, are not the documents as specified either in the order of the Supreme Court or in the SIR instructions referred to above," the EC's letter to the CEO said, directing ‘strict compliance'. State finance minister Chandrima Bhattacharyya, alleging this was a direct violation of the SC order, said: "Sanction letters under PMAY-G, IAY, Banglar Bari (Gramin) are given to only those who have land. The CEO sought this clarification on Jan 21. In between, these documents were accepted by the EC officials. A month later — and most importantly after the SIR hearings were complete — this clarification is being used. This is a direct attempt to disenfranchise genuine voters. What happens to people who submitted these documents?"