Kolkata, March 11 The 10-member delegation of the Trinamool Congress MPs which met the full-bench of the Election Commission of India (ECI) on the issue of the bogus voters in West Bengal had raised specific questions to the commission on the duplicate Election Photo Identity Card (EPIC) numbers allegedly in use in the country.
The delegation, consisting both Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha members of Trinamool Congress, submitted a memorandum to the ECI where it sought specific answers of the exact number of EPIC cars with duplicate numbers prevailing in the country and their state-wise breakup.
Another question raised by the delegation is whether the voters having the duplicate EPIC numbers would be ultimately barred from casting votes.
The third question is why the commission had suppressed the issue of the existence of the duplicate EPIC numbers before the matter was brought to public notice by the West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.
The fourth question is how feasible is ECI’s commitment to solve the issue of duplicate EPIC numbers within a period of just three months.
According to four-time Trinamool Congress Lok Sabha member and senior advocate of Calcutta High Court Kalyan Banerjee, was a member of the delegation, under Rule 28 of the Representation of People Act, one EPIC number should be allotted to one voter.
“The integrity of the commission depends on how fairly it could conduct the elections. EPIC cards are sources of confidence to the answers. We raised specific queries to the commission. However, they were not able to give any definite answer,” Banerjee said.
According to the cricketer-turned-politician and Trinamool Congress Lok Sabha member from Bardhaman-Durgapur Lok Sabha Kirti Azad, who was also a member of the delegation, claimed that almost 40 lakh voters were added in Maharashtra before the assembly elections there.
“One EPIC number can be allotted to a single voter and not to multi voters. We have got specific information that AADHAR cards are also being cloned to make manipulations in the voters; list,” Azad said.
Another member of the delegation and the party’s Rajya Sabha member Sagarika Ghosh said that their basic question was how the commission expects to solve the problem of duplicate EPIC numbers, unless they have the full data on how many such cards with duplicate numbers exist in the entire country.
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