‘Detention camps for deleted voters in West Bengal’, says BJP MP, party distances itself from statement

A controversy has erupted in West Bengal after a BJP Rajya Sabha MP reportedly claimed that detention camps would be set up for people whose names are removed from electoral rolls.

The remarks, made during a public meeting in Cooch Behar’s Dinhata area, suggested that individuals could be confined and asked to establish their origin, triggering sharp political reactions.

However, the BJP’s West Bengal unit has publicly distanced itself from the comments. State party leaders said they were not aware of the circumstances under which the remarks were made and indicated that the matter would be reviewed by the party’s central leadership.

Interestingly, Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Tuesday assured the Matua community that the voting rights of individuals who have submitted applications for citizenship under the Citizenship (Amendment) Act will be preserved. 

“The people from the Matua community have nothing to worry about. Every refugee who has come to India will be treated as a citizen. This is the BJP’s promise. No one can harm them. Not even Mamata Banerjee,” the Union Home Minister said, affirming that the protection of the refugees will continue along with the drive against infiltrators.

Matuas are people from a socially backward community who came to West Bengal as refugees from neighbouring Bangladesh and settled in various pockets of the state, with their concentration being mainly in Nadia and North 24 Parganas districts.

Since the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in West Bengal started, Trinamool Congress and CM Mamata Banerjee have been constantly making claims that several Matua voters settled in the state would lose their voting rights.

With the conclusion of the first stage of the three-stage SIR, which was the enumeration phase, the second stage of the exercise started on December 27 with the beginning of the hearing sessions on the claims and objections on the draft voters’ list in the state, which was published on December 16. 

Each table of the hearing session will be conducted by the Electoral Registration Officer (ERO), who will be assisted by one Assistant Electoral Registration Officer (AERO).

The Election Commission of India (ECI) has appointed one micro-observer to oversee the hearing process at each table. In total, 4,600 micro-observers have been assigned by the ECI to supervise the hearing sessions. They are either direct central government employees or employees from central public sector undertakings or public sector banks, especially from the Group-B category and a few from the Group-A category.

The commission had set a target for each ERO to complete hearings on 150 cases a day.

The last time the SIR was conducted in West Bengal was in 2002.

The initial stage of hearing sessions will be on the ‘unmapped’ voters, not having any links with the 2002 voters’ list, be it through ‘self-mapping’ or through ‘progeny mapping’. The number of such unmapped voters is around 30 lakh.

In the next stage of the hearing, the doubtful cases with weird family-tree data have been detected by the Commission in the course of ‘progeny mapping’. The number of such doubtful cases is around 1.36 crore.

Some doubtful cases included voters who were 45 years old or older but were not listed in the 2002 voter registry, voters who became fathers at the age of 15 or younger, voters who became grandfathers at the age of 40 or younger, and voters whose fathers and mothers shared the same names.

The commission has already taken several steps to ensure that forged identity documents cannot be passed on and cleared as genuine during the hearing sessions.

The commission had also fixed the accountability of the EROs and the district magistrates, as well as the district electoral officers, on this count.

The draft voters’ list was published on December 16. The final voters’ list will be published on February 14 next year.

Soon after that, the ECI will announce the polling dates for the crucial Assembly elections in West Bengal, scheduled for next year.

(with inputs from syndicated feed)