West Bengal polls: TMC, other parties help deleted voters file appeals

KOLKATA: Trinamool, Congress and Left workers are reaching out to citizens, omitted from the electoral roll after the SIR exercise, to help them file appeals at tribunals to get their voting rights back.

The most active seem local Trinamool units, which have set up "war rooms" and SIR assistance camps. In areas, like Chetla, Pratapaditya Road and Bhowanipore, they claim to be working round the clock to help people get their names back on the electoral roll. A Trinamool worker in Chetla said, "We have created desks, where our volunteers are filling forms for the elderly and those unfamiliar with the process."






According to KMC MMiC Sandip Ranjan Bakshi, 27 applications were prepared on Monday and 20 each on Tuesday and Wednesday. "Our members and lawyers have been accompanying deleted voters to Survey Building to help them file their applications before tribunals," said Bakshi.

A party worker from Pratapaditya Road called the exercise "a mission". "We are calling up affected voters, verifying their details and helping them draft tribunal pleas correctly so they are not rejected again." In Shyampukur, where more than 2,000 voters were omitted on Tuesday, Trinamool candidate Sashi Panja said party supporters were working hard to try and file their tribunal appeals by Thursday. "Some from the party have been relieved of campaign duties and told to focus on helping affected voters," said Panja, who herself was under adjudication but was cleared subsequently.

Opposition parties, too, have joined the effort, albeit on a smaller scale. Ashutosh Chatterjee, Congress candidate from Rashbehari, who filed his nomination on Wednesday, was led by a group of deleted voters as a mark of protest against the bulk disenfranchisement of citizens. "The EC was to open help desks for submitting online applications. They failed to do so and parties chipped in," he said. Prasenjit Bose, SIR committee chairman of the state Congress unit, pointed out a team at Bidhan Bhavan handled thousands of cases in 24 hours. "Camps are on in every district. Since Tuesday, I have handled a bulk of cases from Malda, Murshidabad, North Dinajpur and North and South 24 Parganas. In Kolkata, too, deleted voters are being helped out," he said.

CPM state committee member Madhuja Sen Roy said they had formed district-wise legal cells. "We are taking lawyers' help to file applications. In Galsi, we led a rally of affected voters to the district office on Wednesday," she said.

SUCI has roped in advocates for the district-wise help desks. SUCI state secretariat member Tarunkanti Naskar said, "We have set up help desks with the assistance of the Legal Service Centre."

In Howrah, where offline applications have begun, voters called it a "document-heavy process". Kamalika Biswas, whose name was deleted, said, "My BLA helped me with the nitty-gritty."

(With inputs from Poulami Roy Banerjee)
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