Bengal AERO resigns from SIR-related work, alleging attempts to delete names of genuine voters

Kolkata: Controversies erupted after an Assistant Electoral Registration Officer (AERO), engaged in the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in West Bengal, tendered resignation from the said exercise, accusing that attempts are being made to delete names of several genuine voters from the voters’ list by unnecessarily categorising them as “logical discrepancy” cases.

Logical discrepancy cases refer to voters who were identified as having weird family tree data during progeny mapping.

Alleging that these logical discrepancies are a conspiracy to exclude a large section of the country’s marginalised population, Mausum Sarkar, the AERO of the Bagnan Assembly constituency, submitted his resignation letter to the concerned ERO, Achintya Kumar Mandal, requesting to be relieved from his duties related to the SIR.

He submitted the letter on Thursday, and the matter came to light on Friday night after ERO Achintya Kumar Mandal acknowledged receipt of the letter and said that he had forwarded it to the higher authorities.

Mausum Sarkar is an officer in the Block Disaster Management Department of Bagnan Block No. II. The hearing on logical discrepancies is scheduled to begin on January 14 in Bagnan Block No. II. The number of such cases in that block is approximately 24,000.

Mausum Sarkar sought to be relieved from his duties as AERO before this hearing.

In his letter, he explained that “the spelling mistakes in names mentioned in the logical discrepancies were present in the 2002 electoral roll, but later, ordinary citizens corrected them by filling out Form 8 according to the rules of the Election Commission of India. This is why discrepancies are being found in the spelling of names. The same applies to errors in age.”

Regarding this matter, Mausum Babu told local reporters, “As a responsible citizen, I believe there is no sense in this kind of logical discrepancy. This has been done with the intention of cancelling the votes of a large section of people and those from marginalised communities. They lack the 12 documents required for clearing the logical discrepancy. They have voter cards, Aadhaar cards and ration cards, but those are not being accepted. This will put a particular class of people and many from marginalised communities in trouble.”

Meanwhile, the District Magistrate of Howrah, P. Deepap Priya, declined to comment on the matter.

IANS