Kolkata, March 4 Trinamool Congress seems to have gone on the backfoot as one of their panchayat body chiefs has her name enrolled in two different assembly constituencies in a particular district of West Bengal.
The ruling party leader whose name has surfaced in the matter is Sefali Khatun who is the head of the Kalygunj Panchayat Samiti in Nadia district in West Bengal.
The state leadership of BJP has drawn the notice of the Election Commission of India (ECI) and the office of the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO), West Bengal with documents supporting their claims that Khatun’s name appeared as a voter in both Nakashipara and Kalygunj assembly constituencies, both in Nadia district.
Giving her reaction to the media persons, Khatun clarified that she was not aware that her name had continued in the voter’s list of Nakashipara, where she used to stay before.
“Previously we used to stay at Nakashipara and hence my name was in the voter’s list there. However, later we shifted to Debgram under the Kalygunj assembly constituency and got my name as a voter there. But I was not aware that my name had continued in the voters’ list of Nakashipara,” she claimed.
State BJP leadership had claimed that such clarifications are hilarious from an individual who is herself a part of the administration.
However, after the matter was brought to the notice of the ECI during the day, the name of Khatun was deleted from the voters’ list of Nakashipara.
While addressing the extended organisational meeting of Trinamool Congress last week, the Chief Minister accused the BJP of enlisting voters from other states in the voters’ list in West Bengal and to substantiate her allegations, she referred to a couple of instances of electors of two different states having identical EPIC numbers.
On Sunday, the ECI issued a clarification, issued a statement indirectly refuting the allegations brought forward by West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, and claimed that the duplication of EPIC numbers does not imply duplicate/fake voters. The commission has also clarified that some cases of duplicate EPIC numbers were caused by the use of identical alphanumeric series by two different states or Union Territories.
However, Trinamool Congress had described the commission’s clarification as mere eye-wash and did not conform to ECI’s own guidelines in this regard.
--IANS
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