AERO resigns over voter list revision in West Bengal

A controversy has erupted in West Bengal after an Assistant Electoral Registration Officer resigned from the Special Intensive Revision exercise, alleging attempts to delete genuine voters by marking them as logical discrepancy cases. The issue has sparked concern ahead of scheduled hearings

Kolkata: Controversy erupted after an Assistant Electoral Registration Officer (AERO), engaged in the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in West Bengal, tendered his resignation from the exercise, accusing attempts to delete the names of several genuine voters from the voters’ list by unnecessarily categorising them as “logical discrepancy” cases.

Logical discrepancy cases refer to voters who were identified as having irregular family tree data during progeny mapping. Alleging that these logical discrepancies are a conspiracy to exclude a large section of the country’s marginalised population, Mausum Sarkar, the AERO of the Bagnan Assembly constituency, submitted his resignation letter to the concerned ERO, Achintya Kumar Mandal, requesting to be relieved from his duties related to the SIR.

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He submitted the letter on Thursday and the matter came to light on Friday night after ERO Achintya Kumar Mandal acknowledged receipt of the letter and said that he had forwarded it to the higher authorities.

Mausum Sarkar is an officer in the Block Disaster Management Department of Bagnan Block No. II.

The hearing on logical discrepancies is scheduled to begin on January 14 in Bagnan Block No. II. The number of such cases in the block is approximately 24,000. Mausum Sarkar sought to be relieved from his duties as AERO before this hearing.

In his letter, he explained that “the spelling mistakes in names mentioned in the logical discrepancies were present in the 2002 electoral roll, but later, ordinary citizens corrected them by filling out Form 8 according to the rules of the Election Commission of India. This is why discrepancies are being found in the spelling of names. The same applies to errors in age.”

Regarding the matter, Mausum Babu told local reporters, “As a responsible citizen, I believe there is no sense in this kind of logical discrepancy. This has been done with the intention of cancelling the votes of a large section of people, especially those from marginalised communities. They lack the 12 documents required for clearing the logical discrepancy. They have voter cards, Aadhaar cards and ration cards, but those are not being accepted. This will put a particular class of people and many from marginalised communities in trouble.”

Meanwhile, the District Magistrate of Howrah, P Deepap Priya, declined to comment on the matter.