Kolkata’s fire-ravaged slum residents fear SIR fallout

IDENTITY DOCUMENTS TURN TO ASHES

- PRESS TRUST OF INDIA

Residents of several fire-hit slums in Kolkata, from Topsia’s Majdoorpara to the makeshift settlements under New Alipore’s Durgapur bridge, are gripped by mounting anxiety as identity documents lost in recent blazes now threaten their exclusion in the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls.

Across these pockets, the fear is the same: without Aadhaar, voter cards or PAN cards, many worry they may be marked as “nonexistent” on the rolls in this year’s verification exercise. For hundreds who have constructed makeshift homes with tarpaulin sheets, tin plates or whatever remained after the fire incidents, the loss of identity documents is proving far harder a hit than that of the homes themselves.

Binapani Mondal sat outside the skeletal frame of her rebuilt hut at Pagladanga, still haunted by the April blaze that tore through their canal-side settlement. Her biggest fear concerns her elder son Rajesh, who works at a grill factory in Gujarat. His Aadhaar, voter ID and PAN card were all reduced to ashes that night.