Didi questions EC’s ‘audacity’ in calling icons to SIR hearings

Kolkata: CM Mamata Banerjee on Saturday questioned the Election Commission's "audacity" to call Bengal's icons — Nobel laureate Amartya Sen, poet Joy Goswami, a Bharat Sevashram Sangha maharaj, cricketer Md Shami and actor-MP Dev — for SIR hearings and alleged that the exercise's "objective seems neither of correction nor of inclusion in the electoral rolls but solely of deletion and exclusion".Banerjee said this reflected "a disturbing pattern of political bias and autocratic high-handedness by an institution that is expected to function as a constitutional authority". The EC "appears to have descended to a level that is difficult to comprehend and deeply alarming for any democratic society", she added.
The CM's letter, her fifth since the Nov 4 SIR rollout in Bengal, to chief election commissioner Gyanesh Kumar came on a day Bengal reported yet another death of a 75-year-old retired Birbhum school teacher, who collapsed and died in the SIR hearing queue."It is shocking that an exercise which should have been constructive and productive has already seen 77 deaths with four attempts to suicide and 17 persons falling sick and necessitating hospitalisation," she wrote.Banerjee also referred to reports in which EC-appointed micro-observers were intimidating voters as "desh drohi". "There are disturbing reports of common citizens being branded by some observers as "desh drohi" and subjected to verbal abuse without any provocation. The EC expects the state to provide security to these so-called observers, at a time when the state police is already heavily deployed for the Gangasagar Mela, and its primary duty is to protect ordinary citizens — not to shield the so-called observers," she wrote in her three-page letter.The CM also questioned why the EC portal used to track logical discrepancies in Bengal was different from the one used in other states (SIR is being carried out in 12 states). Dubbing the "logical discrepancies" as "entirely illogical", Banerjee said this was being selectively used "in some constituencies only with political bias"."The options initially provided for disposal of such cases are being altered from the back end in an erratic manner, causing serious confusion. This amounts to a deliberate and clandestine attempt to disenfranchise eligible voters," she wrote.Banerjee also questioned the irrationality of the hearing notices. "Citizens are being harassed and summoned for hearings merely due to minor spelling or age-related variations in the roll detected through AI applications," she said.Calling out the AI-dependent checks, the CM argued: "A name may appear as ‘Mamta' in one document and ‘Mamata' in another; a middle name ‘Kumar' may inadvertently be recorded as ‘Komar' or ‘Kumer'. Similarly, as in records, the age difference between son/daughter with father/mother may be 18 or 19 years. Do such trivial discrepancies justify coercive action that results in harassment, inconvenience and for many even loss of daily wages?" she asked.The CM urged the EC: "Though it is already very late, hope good sense prevails and appropriate corrective actions are taken from your end to minimise the harassment, inconvenience and agony of common citizen of the state." She added in a handwritten note in the letter, "Though I know you won't reply or clarify. But my duty is to inform you the details."