Aadhaar, voter and ration cards found at TMC’s Tangra office

Kolkata: Stacks of voter, Aadhaar and ration cards were unearthed from a locked Trinamool Congress party office on Thursday morning. The party office was under lock after it was painted saffron recently.The recovery on Tangra Lane No. 2 in East Kulia sparked intense tension in the neighbourhood, forcing a large deployment of cops to control protests by agitated locals.The party office, located within the Beleghata Assembly constituency and previously used by ward 57 TMC councillor Jibankumar Saha, was locked since the declaration of Assembly election results on May 4.Local residents, reportedly supported by BJP functionaries, prised open the lock and entered the premises to discover bundles of identity documents neatly arranged inside a cabinet.As news of the discovery spread, a large crowd gathered outside the office, with several residents identified their missing cards among the recovered items. The find has left many puzzled, as some locals already possessed the original documents at home, raising questions about how parallel or duplicate copies were stored inside a political office.Some local residents have levelled serious allegations against the TMC, claiming its netas collected these identity cards earlier under the pretext of facilitating various govt welfare schemes but never returned them.Another resident alleged that cards intercepted at the local post office level were intentionally withheld by party workers.Local BJP leaders have expressed suspicion that the hoarded documents may have been accumulated to manipulate electoral rolls or manufacture fraudulent voter identities.The Tangra recovery mirrors a similar incident that occurred just days ago in Ward 36 of Bidhannagar's Basanti Devi Colony area, where a stash of voter and identity cards was found under similar circumstances. In that instance, locals alleged that political miscreants forcibly seized the cards to suppress voter turnout during the elections.Senior cops said that a comprehensive investigation was initiated to determine how such a vast volume of sensitive govt-issued identification documents ended up at the party office.Police are also attempting to contact every individual whose name appears on the seized cards to verify the circumstances under which they parted with their documents.No TMC leader has come on record regarding the incident so far.