Kolkata: A 36-member core committee led by Trinamool Congress (TMC) state president Subrata Bakshi which was constituted following the instruction of the party supremo Mamata Banerjee to monitor the electoral rolls, will hold a review meeting at Trinamool Bhawan on Thursday with all the district presidents of the party.
According to party sources, the core committee will carry out a stock-taking exercise to find out the status of electoral roll verification in each district. Besides, the district presidents, various chairmen are also expected to attend the meeting. Trinamool Congress supremo Banerjee during a recent party meeting at Netaji Indoor Stadium had announced the core committee comprising Bakshi, party’s national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee, Derek O’Brien, Sudip Bandyopadhyay and several other MPs, MLAs, state ministers and party leaders to review the voters’ list in each of the blocks. As per the instruction of the party supremo, at least four members of the committee will remain available at Trinamool Bhavan to listen to the party workers from the blocks and districts in electoral roll-related problems and will rectify the discrepancies.
After Banerjee had brought allegations of voter list manipulation against the BJP ahead of 2026, Assembly polls in Bengal, about 611 individuals from Gujarat and Haryana were allegedly found to have been registered under the same EPIC number of genuine voters of Bengal. It was found that the same EPIC numbers of 611 genuine voters from Raninagar Assembly in Murshidabad and Gangarampur Assembly in South Dinajpur have been used against the names of 611 people who were from the two BJP ruled states. The EPIC numbers of 482 valid voters from Gangarampur Assembly were found to be the same with another 482 voters who were from different Assembly constituencies of Gujarat, namely Gandhinagar South, Danilimda, Ghatlodia, Kalol, Naroda, Gondal etc.
For example, Md Sainul Islam is a valid voter from Raninagar in Murshidabad with EPIC number XYZ0600841. The same EPIC number has been issued against one Sunita from Haryana’s Barwala Assembly. Sariful Islam from Raninagar has an EPIC number XYZ0599720. The same number was issued against one Surender Kumar Barwala Assembly in Haryana.
Banerjee during the meeting had also urged the people of Bengal to verify their names on the voter list and warned that legitimate voters could be removed under the pretext of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) and the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA).
Following the instruction of Banerjee, her party leaders in various districts last Saturday, started a door-to-door campaign to scrutinise the electoral rolls. The campaign, which began on Saturday, aims to identify any discrepancies in the voter list.