Kolkata, July 30 (IANS) The Leader of the Opposition in the West Bengal Assembly, Suvendu Adhikari, on Wednesday morning, demanded action against the electoral registration officers (EROs) in the state who are allegedly involved in accepting Form-6 applications from fictitious voters without proper verification.
Form 6 is an application for the inclusion of one’s name in the electoral list.
Quoting a memo issued from the office of the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO), West Bengal, Manoj Kumar Agarwal, citing instances of EROs receiving considerable number of Form-6 applications from fictitious voters during sample checks, Adhikari said that “fictitious voters added to the rolls and unauthorised meddling by casual data entry operators is the depth of corruption under a regime led by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee”.
According to Adhikari, the “irregularities” in the system are two-fold: first, where the Booth Level Officers (BLOs) were pressured to “fudge” records, and secondly, the EROs handing over voter lists-related jobs to unqualified hands.
He described this trend as an assault on every citizen’s right to participate in a fair election.
“I demand an immediate investigation and appropriate action against those responsible. The state administration had been rigging the system. It’s time to put things in order,” the leader of the opposition added.
He also questioned why contractual employees of the state government have been involved in disposal functions for different forms related to the electoral revision system.
“BLOs collected documents under urgency, and EROs, who are permanent state government employees, admitted to providing unauthorised access to subordinate contractual staff for disposal of Form 6 applications,” Adhikari claimed.
Just a couple of days back, Adhikari wrote a letter to the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC), Gyanesh Kumar, requesting the latter to take note of the abnormally high number of Form-6 applications submitted last week in West Bengal districts that share a border with Bangladesh.
In the letter, Adhikari had pointed out that the number of Form-6 applications from these Indo-Bangladesh bordering districts in West Bengal this time is hovering around 70,000, a sharp rise from the usual average of 20,000 to 25,000.
He said the Form 6 applications were filed in Cooch Behar, Alipurduar, Jalpaiguri, Malda, North Dinajpur, Murshidabad, Nadia, and North and South 24 Parganas districts.
–IANS
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