West Bengal polls: 97-year-old refugee, retired teacher among those deleted from voter list
Subarna Bala Poddar, born in undivided Bengal and displaced in 1947, has voted in every election but her name is no longer on the lists. Unaware of the deletion, he said: “Shorir dil vote debo (I will vote if health permits).” What if he can’t vote? He replied: “I have a voter card. Why can’t I vote?”
His family in Kolkata’s Narkeldanga said he had previously used the facility of voting at home. This time, despite submitting her voter ID, Aadhaar, passbook and widow pension records, her request was rejected. The spelling discrepancy – “Swarna Bala” in the 2002 records – led to a hearing, after which her papers were rejected. A new attempt at inclusion through Form 6 also failed. Only four of eight family members will be able to vote; The rest, including his two grandchildren, lost their voting rights. Trinamool Congress booth official said that the number of voters in the district has decreased from 1,326 to 1,092.
Retired teacher S Asraful Haque, who served as chairman in Hooghly for 12 elections, was also removed from the lists, although his family members remained in the list. He submitted passport, land records, PAN, Aadhaar and bank documents. “We have been living here for generations. I have ancestral land records from 1944. My mother and father’s names were on the 1956 voter list, I have that document. My name was also on the 2002 list. Still, I was summoned to the hearing. No specific reason was stated in the notification,” he said.
He applied to a court. “Is it possible to delete the name of a person who has a passport, land registry and pension?” he asked after finding himself under sentence and was later placed on an additional expungement list.
At Ranaghat in Nadia district, Jibankrishna Biswas collapsed and died while waiting outside an SDO office to object to deletion of his and his daughter’s names. His family attributed his death to the stress of the process. Trinamool Congress staged a protest blaming the Centre. “Politics took his life,” his daughter said.
Families in the regions reported that hearings were held without a clear explanation, that documents were deemed insufficient, and that there were sudden transitions from the “decision-making” stage to the deletion stage. For many, the right to vote has become an irreversible struggle filled with offices, queues and paperwork.
