PANIC HITS TMC AS SIR DELETIONS PUT LEADERS AT RISK

Leaders of West Bengal’s ruling party Trinamool Congress are panic stricken as the Election Commission has released figures of voter deletions from the draft SIR roll to be published on December 16.

- SUPROTIM MUKHERJEE

In many prime Assembly constituencies, even in Kolkata, the number of deletions is set to outnumber or run very close to the winning margins of the ruling party's candidates in the last elections.

Political observers say that since the ruling party is usually seen as the beneficiary of votes polled from ghost voters, the proposed deletions, if they appear in the final SIR list, can cause major upsets or at least make the contest a very closely fought affair.

In that list are the names of marquee Assembly constituencies which are represented by Trinamool heavyweights like Mamata Banerjee, the party's Muslim face Firhad Hakim, Education Minister Bratya Basu, Finance Minister Chandrima Bhattacharya and IT Minister Babul Supriyo, apart from long-term MLA Nayana Bandyopadhyay.

Voters whose names will disappear from the draft roll are those whose SIR forms fall in the “uncollectible” category, which means their enumeration forms could not be collected because they were absent, dead, could not be traced or were duplicate voters.