Bengal: Left Parties Demand Electoral Justice After 60 Lakh Put ‘Under-Consideration’

“The right to the vote must be protected, no voting without legitimate voters” echoed in the area surrounding the office of the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) of West Bengal, as a sit-in protest called by the Left Front continued from Wednesday (March 4) to Thursday afternoon (March 5).

The protest, centred on the issue of safeguarding citizens democratic rights in West Bengal, turned the area around the CEO’s office into a scene of huge political mobilisation. Amid the demonstration, protesters repeatedly raised slogans declaring that “No legitimate voter should be removed from the electoral roll in the name of the Special Intensive Revision or SIR.

Under mounting pressure from the 24-hour sit-in protest organised by Left parties, Chief Electoral Officer Manoj Agarwal met a delegation on Thursday afternoon, led by Left Front chairman Biman Basu, who submitted a memorandum outlining their demands.

Among those who joined the protest were Mostari Banu of Bhagabangola in Murshidabad, the principal and first petitioner against SIR, and Shabana Yasmin, the mother of 10 year-old Tamanna Khatun, who was brutally killed in a bomb allegedly hurled by ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) miscreants following the Kaliganj Assembly bye-election in Nadia on June 23, last year. Numerous voters whose names have allegedly been removed from the electoral rolls or are facing adjudication after the SIR, process also participated in the agitation.

Thousands of protesters spent a sleepless night on the streets adjoining the CEO office, continuing their protest through the night.

Why This Path of Protest Was Chosen

Following the recent publication of the voter list in West Bengal, nearly 60 lakh people have been placed in ‘under consideration’ status. A large proportion of them are reportedly poor individuals from the minority Muslim and Matua communities.

Question are being raised over whether the intervention of Indian Political Action Committee (IPAC), the election strategy firm associated with the ruling TMC, had led to these 60 lakh voters being left in a state of uncertainty.

Amid an unprecedented dispute between two constitutional authorities, the matter concerning this vast number of voters has been placed under judicial scrutiny following directions from the Supreme Court. However, the Election Commission has pointed fingers at the state administration for being responsible for the present situation.

The Election Commission of India (ECI) alleged that after collecting documents from voters who appeared at the hearings, the state government’s Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) delayed uploading those records for a prolonged period. Even after serious inconsistencies were detected in the uploading documents, the ECI’s special observers reportedly failed to secure any corrective action, despite repeatedly bringing the discrepancies to the notice of the EROs.

Subsequently, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee moved the Supreme Court, where the state government made a single principal demand that the ECI’s observers and micro-observers be excluded from the process of verifying the hearing documents. Before the apex court, the ECI argued that of the EROs appointed by state, 150 out of the 294 constituencies were being handled by officials who did not hold the rank of Sub-Divisional Officer (SDO). In other parts of the country, all EROs involved in the SIR process were of SDO rank, with West Bengal being the sole exception, it added.

Following the hearing, the Supreme Court directed the state to appoint 8,505 Group B rank officers to assist in the verification process.  However, that triggered fresh friction between the ECI and the state government. Taking note of the continuing dispute, the apex court ultimately placed the verification process under the supervision of the judiciary. At present, 505 judicial officers across the state are examining the documents of nearly 60 lakh adjudication voters taking decisions on their eligibility, a development that has created a situation of deep uncertainty.

It was to end this uncertainty at the earliest and ensure that the names of all legitimate voters remain on the electoral rolls, that the Left Front had called for the sit-in protest movement on March 4.

State ‘Interference’ in the Left Front Protest

On Wednesday afternoon, the Left Front, along with other allied Left parties, marched in a procession to the Election Commission office. The rally was attended by several thousand people.  Among those present were Left Front chairman Biman Basu, CPI(M) state secretary Mohd Salim along with several other Left leaders.

Left Front chairman Biman Basu addressing the gathering in front of the CEO office on March 4 and 5

Police had set up barricades in front of the ECI’s office to stop the procession. In protest, Left activists hung banners and flags on the police barricades, with slogans demanding the protection of voting rights.

Wednesday evening onward, the Kolkata Police began efforts to remove the Left activists who were staging a sit-in protest. When a police officer asked the protesters to clear the road, Salim pointed out to him that roads often remain blocked for the Chief Minister, and even the road in front of Raj Bhavan was frequently restricted for her nephew, Abhishel Banerjee, while intersections, such as Chowringhee Road, were also blocked during TMC programmes. 

The CPI(M) leader questioned the police why it did not ask those people to clear the roads, and challenged them to show the permissions granted for such programmes. “If you cannot do that, do not try to remove our protest”, he added. He declared that the agitation would continue on the streets until the CEO accepted their memorandum and assured a resolution regarding what he described as the ‘oppressive’ SIR process. “Our struggle will continue until our demands are met” he added.  

Salim said the Assembly elections held with an incorrect voter list, without lakhs of voters, was an absurdity, and the Left Front “cannot allow it”. While the ECI is actually implementing the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) narrative, the state (TMC) government was misleading people and had done nothing, he said, alleging a “tacit understanding between BJP and the constitutional authority responsible for conducting elections”.

As the CEO did not accept the memorandum on Wednesday, thousands of protesters spent the night on the road.  Under mounting pressure from the continuing agitation, the CEO on Thursday afternoon was finally compelled to accept the memorandum from Left Front representatives.

State Chief Election Commissioner’s Opinion

On  March 5 afternoon, a delegation of Left Front and its allied parties, led by Basu, met the CEO Manoj Agarwal, where they stated that no election should be conducted when nearly 60 lakh people remain “under consideration’ in the voter list. They insisted that voting rights must first be ensured to all eligible citizens.

In response, the CEO told the delegation that a full bench of the ECI would visit the state on March 9-10 and that the it would take a decision on the matter. He also indicated that an all-party meeting would be convened at that time.

Later, addressing the ongoing sit-in protest and people gathering, Basu said that the delegation had placed its demands before the CEO and that he had not disagreed with their arguments. However, the CEO indicated that a decision had so far reached only 6 lakh names in the electoral rolls. Basu described the situation as a failure on the part of the ECI.

The writer covers the Jangalmahal region for ‘Ganashakti’ newspaper in West Bengal.

(Photographs by Madhu Sudan Chatterjee)