Priyanka Tiwari
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The Trinamool Congress (TMC), the ruling party in West Bengal, claimed that the Election Commission’s statement that duplicate numbers do not equate to fake voters, supported their theory on the presence of non-resident voters added to the state’s electoral list for the benefit of a ‘certain party’ in particular.
The EC had earlier on Sunday reported that while some voters’ EPIC numbers may be the same, many others have different details singular to them such as their demographics, state, assembly constituency, and polling booth. This comes on the heels of news about voters being issued similar voter card numbers in two distinct states.
"A voter whose name is in the electoral rolls may be registered in any other state or Union territory than the one that is declared on the EPIC.” the EC stated. “No elector can vote outside their designated constituency.”
TMC state general secretary Kunal Ghosh speaking to the press stated that the EC’s statement “is evidence to support out claim that names have been added to the electoral list after the previous elections which helps the BJP gain more votes“.
“The names do not match with the permanent voters of the region and are clearly intended to assist the ruling party at the Centre. This defect was, in fact, noted by our supremo Mamata Banerjee some days back,” he said.
TMC leaders and members have started to reach out to their respective regions to check the voter lists and ensure that they are correct physically.
“They cannot win a single assembly seat even after making all attempts to gerrymander and harass the voters. West Bengal will not make it easy for them,” he said.
“Seeing the violence meted out by TMC to the voters in the last few elections, they are frightened of losing their stronghold in the next assembly election because they know that all TMC terrorism and false voting will not be enough to dominate the public mandate,” argued BJP spokesperson Samik Bhattacharya.
The commission assures all voters that registered voters will be given special EPIC numbers so that there will be no cases of scaremongering. Any case of multiple EPIC will be dealt with by issuing a new number,” said the Election Commission.
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