Kolkata: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday accused the Election Commission of India (ECI) of deliberately and specially targeting the women voters in the state for deletion of their names from the voter list through the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in the state.
Speaking to the media persons, the Chief Minister hinted that this attempt by the Commission comes amid the records in the past few elections of West Bengal, where Trinamool Congress received the overwhelming support of the women voters, a large section of whom had benefited from the different social welfare schemes of the state government exclusively meant for women.
She also said that because of the errors on the part of the Commission, there had been several instances where the names of married women voters had been shown as “unmapped” and hence had been excluded from the draft voters’ list.
According to her, the surnames and addresses of women voters change after their marriage, and in many such cases, the names of the women voters have been deleted from the draft list.
She also accused the Commission of deliberately deleting the names of several genuine voters through the use of artificial intelligence (AI).
Speaking on the occasion, the Chief Minister also launched a scathing attack against the Commission for deliberately appointing micro-observers for the hearing sessions on claims and objections over the draft voters’ list in West Bengal.
“These micro-observers are actually agents of the BJP. The Commission seems to be deciding which voters will elect which government. Already, 84 people in West Bengal have died after becoming victims of SIR. Four made suicide attempts. A total of 13 people died from heart attacks. The BJP and the ECI should take the responsibility for it,” the Chief Minister said.
Her allegations on the issue of micro-observers come just a day after the Commission announced the decision to appoint 2,000 additional micro-observers for West Bengal, thus taking the total number of micro-observers in the state to 6,600.
Incidentally, since these micro-observers are either direct central government employees or employees of central public sector undertakings or public sector banks, the state government has no control over them like the electoral registration officers, assistant electoral registration officers, and the booth-level officer, who are either state government employees or are teachers of state-run schools.
Speaking to the media on Tuesday, the Chief Minister also accused the Commission of unilaterally rejecting the authenticity of the identity certificates that are being issued by the state government without citing any reason.
“Our booth-level agents were not allowed at the hearing session just because the BJP could not arrange for an adequate number of booth-level agents. The factor of ‘logical discrepancy’ was not mentioned at the beginning of the SIR process. It was introduced later with the sole intention of deleting the names of genuine voters,” the Chief Minister said.
(IANS)
