West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Monday wrote another letter to Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, drawing the poll panel’s attention to “serious procedural lapses” in the special intensive revision of electoral rolls in the state, The Telegraph reported.
The chief minister accused the Election Commission of harassing voters and endangering democratic rights through the voter roll revision process.
The state’s draft electoral rolls were published on December 16. They showed that more than 58 lakh voters were removed after being marked dead, shifted or absent.
The deletion from the draft roll is provisional and citizens can object to their names being removed from the list. Citizens whose names have been dropped from the list can file their claims and objections.
In her letter on Monday, Banerjee said that during the claim hearings, voters were submitting documents to support their claim of eligibility, but were often getting no clear acknowledgment or receipt, The Telegraph reported.
She said that no acknowledgment being issued was depriving voters proof of having made the submission and was placing them “at the mercy of internal record-keeping deficiencies”.
Subsequently, at the verification stage, “these documents are reported as ‘not found’ or ‘not available on record’, and on that basis, names of electors are being deleted”, she said in the letter.
Banerjee said that using artificial intelligence tools…
Source: Bengal SIR: Mamata Banerjee alleges lapses, says voters’ proof submissions not being acknowledged
