Kolkata, February 28 In a scathing attack on the Election Commission after the publication of post-SIR electoral rolls in West Bengal removing over 63 lakh names on Saturday, the ruling Trinamool Congress accused the poll panel of "invisible rigging" in collusion with the BJP.
The saffron camp, on the other hand, stated that the voters' list has now been purged of infiltrators and bogus electors who had engulfed the Bengal society like cancer.
Around 63.66 lakh names, nearly 8.3 per cent of the electorate, have been deleted in West Bengal since the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) began in November last year, bringing down the total number of voters in the state to over 7.04 crore ahead of the assembly elections due in April.
In a post on X, the TMC claimed that the names of a councillor of Naihati Municipality and his mother have been deleted from the rolls.
"The full, filthy extent of @BJP4India and @ECISVEEP's silent invisible rigging now stands exposed before Bengal's eyes... An elected representative and his family (were) erased like ghosts in this voter-purge conspiracy," the TMC said in the post.
"Is the Election Commission wearing blinders, stumbling in the dark, unable to spot flesh-and-blood voters right under its nose? Or is this Mr Vanish Kumar's twisted vanishing act where genuine voters are wiped out with a flick of his magic wand, all to rig the game for his Delhi Zamindars?" the party said in the post.
TMC leaders have been describing Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar as "Vanish Kumar", alleging that the poll panel hatched a conspiracy to erase legitimate voters from the electoral rolls in West Bengal.
Talking to reporters, senior TMC minister Firhad Hakim alleged that the BJP has been on a mission to remove the names of voters who are bona fide citizens, branding them as infiltrators only because they did not vote for the BJP.
"But none of them are Bangladeshis or Rohingyas. People of Bengal will prove by the rule of law and documents that they are not infiltrators," he said.
After the SIR began, BJP leaders repeatedly claimed that the revision exercise would remove Bangladeshis and Rohingyas, who were the TMC’s vote bank, from the electoral rolls.
TMC state general secretary Kunal Ghosh alleged, "The EC has done the job as dictated by its masters. The living example is Nandigram, where fewer names were deleted as it is the assembly seat of BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari."
Ghosh asserted that this will not help the BJP win the assembly polls likely to be held in April.
Adhikari, on the other hand, claimed that the post-SIR list showed the extent of "bogus, fake/infiltrator and outsider voters" had swelled in different parts of the state, and the rolls have now been purged "of these elements who had engulfed the Bengal society like cancer."
"These infiltrators will now be shown the door. But the Hindu refugees need not worry. If their names are missing, they can get their names enrolled by applying through CAA. The Matua community members also need not worry," he said.
Matuas, originally from East Pakistan, are a weaker section of Hindus who migrated to India during the Partition and after the creation of Bangladesh.
The community, with an estimated population of three million in the state, can tilt the scales in favour of a political party in more than 30 assembly seats in Nadia, and North and South 24 Parganas districts bordering Bangladesh.
Adhikari claimed that the comments by Ghosh about Nandigram show how panicky the TMC has become after realising that ghost voters and Bangladeshi voters could not be used to inflate their candidates' votes in the next polls.
“By May, a nationalist state government run by the BJP will take over and free Bengal of the virus of fake documents and infiltration,” the leader of the opposition asserted.
He said the deletion of names of a large number of people in Bhabanipur seat represented by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee will ensure she is defeated by a big margin in the hustings.