TMC alert on EC voter verification campaign: A backdoor NRC?

The All India Trinamool Congress (TMC) on Saturday expressed grave concerns over the Election Commission of India's (ECI) planned Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls.

- SIMONTINI BHATTACHARJEE

NEW DELHI:

While speaking to the media persons in the national capital, top TMC leaders and MPs accused the action, purportedly to cleanse voter rolls, of being a surreptitious bid to implement a National Register of Citizens (NRC)-type exercise.

The party criticised the ECI of acting on behalf of the incumbent Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and cautioned that the suggested verification process threatens disenfranchisement of vast segments of Indian citizens, especially the poor, marginalised and migrant communities.

TMC leader Derek O'Brien questioned the timing of the exercise, linking it to what he described as the BJP's desperation to alter its electoral prospects in West Bengal ahead of Assembly polls scheduled for next year.

Under the proposed rules, voters born before January 1987 would have to provide proof of their birth and birthplace.

These would include details of their own birth and one parent's details for those born between 1987 and 2004, and their own and both their parents' documents in the case of those born after 2004.

Names would be removed from the electoral rolls if they weren't provided within a month.