Kolkata: As the sun beat down, Munsi Rezaul Karim boarded a Khanakul-bound bus on Tuesday, armed with an appointment letter from EC, assigning him to Booth 140A at Basantapur Prathamik Vidyalaya as the third polling officer.
What would have been a routine civic duty turned out to be a strange one this year. The EC may have entrusted him with electoral job but it has stripped him of his voting right.
Karim is one among scores of govt employees caught in the SIR dragnet. Karim's name was placed as ‘under adjudication' on the roll, and later, struck off despite an appeal in the tribunal. He said. "It is a hollow feeling to be assigned by the same commission that robbed me of my rights."
The stories of disenfranchised poll workers echo across south Bengal districts, revealing a gap between administrative rigour and ground reality. Arpita Mukherjee, a library and information assistant at National Library, finds herself in a similar bureaucratic limbo. Despite her name being deleted, she is assigned as the first polling officer near Mukundapur in Jadavpur constituency. "The irony is I will conduct the election and work on counting day but won't be allowed to vote," she said.
Mukherjee was in Gujarat when her SIR hearing notice arrived and she sent her brother with her birth certificate, passport and central govt employment papers. "They rejected the papers as I could not be there in person," she said. This, despite, the EC allowing family members to attend SIR hearings for voters out of station or caught in important work. Mukherjee's subsequent attempts at re-enrolling by submitting Form 6 were rejected and the tribunal portal labelled her EPIC "invalid".
For Sk Zakir Hossain, who has voted at least five times, the situation borders on being absurd. Deployed as the first polling officer in Raina, Burdwan East, Hossain is the only one from his five-member family whose name is deleted. While EC flagged a spelling error in his father's name, his father and two brothers, whose documents, too, had the same clerical error, were cleared and restored to the list. "I have been on polling duty for 13 years," Hossain said. "The returning officer even asked me why I hadn't cast a postal ballot. I told him, ‘you haven't given me the right to'."
There are some who are watching from the sidelines. Deleted voter Munsi Sadekul Karim was deployed as a presiding officer in Bhatpara but a spinal injury has left him bedridden. "This is the first time in years that I could neither vote nor conduct the poll," he said.
Disenfranchised enforcers stand as a testament to the SIR complexities. They will ensure citizens' voice is heard but their own will remain silenced by the system they serve.