Kolkata: A 10-member Trinamool Congress delegation met the Election Commission in New Delhi on Tuesday and asked how the poll body planned to clean up the duplicate EPIC card "mess in just three months" when the issue had persisted for years. Bengal BJP leaders, who also went to the EC, demanded revision and audit of the electoral roll, claiming there were over 13 lakh duplicate voters in Bengal.
After the meeting, TMC MPs said the issue of duplicate EPIC numbers was buried for several years "until it was flagged by chief minister Mamata Banerjee". They alleged that Aadhar cards were being cloned to facilitate fake voter registration. "If the EC wants to resolve the issue of duplicate EPIC numbers within three months, it has to know the details of the total number of such cards and the states in which it is issued," said Derek O Brien, the party's Rajya Sabha MP.
In a six-page memorandum to the CEC and other ECs, the MPs questioned the commission's provision to seed EPIC numbers with Aadhaar without clearly informing voters that the process is voluntary. "How does the EC ensure that the alleged cloning of Aadhaar numbers does not affect the EPIC and electoral registration of voters?" they asked. The party said, "At this point, it is unclear how many duplicate votes have been cast across various elections due to this EPIC number issue. It also raises several questions about people being denied the right to vote due to this negligence." The party's Lok Sabha chief whip Kalyan Banerjee said, "If voters' confidence is damaged, questions will remain about whether the elections are conducted freely. The EC couldn't give a definite answer today. They even spoke about extending the April 30 deadline. We didn't receive any satisfactory answer from them during the meeting."
Bengal BJP netas, who met the EC on Tuesday, demanded the revision and audit of the electoral roll. They have flagged nearly 13,03,065 duplicate voters in the existing electoral roll. The BJP claimed they had found 323 EPIC cards where the same voter was registered in another state apart from Bengal. In 857 cases, the same EPIC number was allotted to different persons in Bengal, and in 7,235 cases, the same name appeared in the duplicate EPIC card in the same state, the BJP claimed. "In the last 14 years, there have been manipulations in the electoral roll. We demand revision and audit of the electoral roll," said Bengal BJP in-charge Amit Malviya.
On Tuesday morning, before the BJP delegation met the EC, Bengal BJP president Sukanta Majumdar spoke at length with the leader of opposition Suvendu Adhikari. "If we have to keep the election violence-free, then we need an audit of the electoral rolls. We have also flagged the existence of infiltrators from Bangladesh and Rohingyas in the state," Majumdar said.
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