Trinamool leader Mamata Banerjee may appear lonely on the political stage but in her Parliamentary constituency of South Kolkata, her men are working overtime to get as many new voters onto the list. So much so that state election department officials are in a tizzy over the wild increase in the number of voters in her constituency. With less than a week left for the publication of the final list, officials are now checking the veracity of nearly 70,000 fresh appeals for inclusion, deletion or change of address of voters that have come in since the last revision in 2002. While the EC’s standard is a 2-2.5 per cent growth rate in the number of total electors in a particular constituency in West Bengal, in Banerjee’s constituency—if the fresh applications are accepted—the number will go up by nearly 7 to 7.5 per cent. Mamata’s workers are cashing in on a new EC guideline that allows bulk claims submitted by political party leaders or representatives for inclusion, deletion or change of address. Earlier, a voter had to submit the forms individually. Not surprising, therefore, that an overwhelming majority of these are fresh applications for inclusion of names. Banerjee’s constituency—where she won last time by over 2 lakh votes—stands in stark contrast to others in the state where the number of such appeals is negligible. The flood began last December as soon as summary revision was taken up. A Trinamool councillor, for example, submitted a bulk of over 2000 applications from Ballygunge Assembly segment of the parliament seat. Yet, others from Tollygunge, Dhakuria and Alipore segments submitted over 45,000 applications. The rest came from segments like Rash Behari, Chowringhee and Sonarpur. TMC general secretary Mukul Roy has a ready explanation: ‘‘During an earlier revision of electoral rolls in 2002, nearly 150,000 names of loyal Trinamool Congress voters were struck off the list by the CPI(M) in Didi’s constituency. So during the current revision we are determined to get their names back in the list,’’ said Roy. ‘‘Besides, the claims our party represenatives have submitted are mostly backed by documentary evidence of bonafide voters,’’ Roy added. State Election Department officials do not deny these Trinamool charges. In West Bengal, the ruling LF partners, especially the CPI(M), takes revision of rolls as a serious ‘‘political exercise’’ and the party’s wholetimers are engaged in the job. This was one occasion when TMC seemed to have taken the job seriously fearing a downslide in Mamata’s loyal voters. However, the state election department has directed its branches here in a circular to be extra careful with inclusion of names before any election as in the past ‘‘verification of such claims has proved that most of these are bogus.’’ The department has urged that EC guidelines be followed while scrutinising the claims. According to these, senior officials will personally supervise a section of the claims: district election officers will examine 2 per cent of all claims, Electoral Registration officers 5 per cent, Assistant Electoral Registration Officers 12 per cent. And the rest can be done by routine staff.
