Trinamool ex-MP Jawhar Sircar urges poll body to rectify West Bengal voters' list

New Delhi, Nov 11 (IANS) Former Member of Parliament from West Bengal’s ruling Trinamool Congress and retired bureaucrat Jawhar Sircar has stressed the removal of duplicate, dead, missing, and fake voters’ names from the state’s electoral rolls, claiming that the number could be anything between 70 lakh and 1.25 crore.

The known Trinamool-baiter was responding to Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee asking the Election Commission to immediately cease its Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electors’ roll.

Speaking to the media on Monday in Siliguri on an administrative visit, CM Mamata Banerjee announced that she would continue to stand by the state’s voters to “protect their rights”, even at the cost of her “throat being slashed” for voicing protest against the exercise.

Urging that no genuine voter's name should be deleted, Sircar took to social media platform Facebook, where he added, “But @0.83% statistical rate of population growth, compounded, the 2002 voters list of 4.58 crores can go up to maximum 6 crores – not 7.64 crore that the 2025 list shows.”

“So, Duplicate, Dead, Missing, False voters' names must be REMOVED – which may be 70 lakhs to 1 crore or even 1.25 crore,” he professed.

Thereafter, ending his post, “Then, new voters have to be included.”

The Chief Minister earlier had associated SIR with the process of National Register of Citizens (NRC), claiming that SIR would disenfranchise two crore voters of the state and that many would be put in detention camps.

The specific number and the comparison had surprised many in her state. The process of SIR has been initiated in West Bengal since Assembly election in the state is expected in the first half of 2026.

The Election Commission’s Booth Level Officers (BLO), accompanied by representatives (Booth Level Agents) of political parties, are currently on a door-to-door visit to compare the 2002 voter list with the electoral roll published in January 2025.

Such an exercise was last undertaken in 2002 in West Bengal. Since the poll body announced the rollout, after its completion in adjacent Bihar, the process has been turned into a political game of narratives by workers of the ruling and Opposition parties alike – spreading rumours and uncertainty, leading to panic, even alleged deaths by suicide.

Despite the tension being built up, turning SIR into a political tool by leaders, the exercise is being carried out in all parts of West Bengal.

Sircar, now a known Trinamool-baiter, was an IAS officer with about four decades of experience – both at the Centre and in West Bengal. He has been the country’s longest-serving Culture Secretary and later, was the CEO of India’s public broadcaster Prasar Bharati that administers Doordarshan and Akashvani.

He was elected to the Rajya Sabha as a Trinamool nominee in August 2021. However, three years later, he resigned in protest against the West Bengal government’s stand in the aftermath of the heinous rape and murder of a medical intern at Kolkata’s R.G. Kar Medical College and Hospital.

He had criticised the Trinamool for its handling of the protestors who took to the streets of West Bengal, raising their voice against the incident. Now residing in Kolkata, he has decided to step back from active politics altogether.

--IANS

jb/rad