The passport of former Telegraph editor R Rajagopal, whose name was deleted from West Bengal’s voter list during this year’s Special Intensive Review (SIR), has been renewed after a second verification by police, a senior official familiar with the matter said on Thursday.
Initial police verification led to a negative report on the deletion of the SIR, delaying the issuance of the passport by more than 100 days, Rajagopal, a native of Thiruvanathapuram and resident of Kolkata, posted last week. Kerala Chief Minister V D Sathisan on Monday wrote to West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari urging him to intervene in the alleged delay.
“Rajagopal’s case has been solved. The police have sent a second report to clear his name. His passport is likely to be handed over to him by Saturday,” the senior official said.
Another person familiar with the matter said Rajagopal had been contacted about restarting the re-verification process on Monday. This person said the passport had been printed but had not yet been delivered.
Rajagopal’s experience is not an isolated one in Kolkata.
A senior Kolkata Police official familiar with the verification process conducted by police for issuance or renewal of passport said they had come across at least 17 cases where a negative police report was filed because the person’s name was not in the SIR.
All these cases concerned the renewal of a passport for a person residing at the same address as on the original passport, as in the case of Rajagopal. The police officer said that this is a procedural issue that occurs at the level of an individual officer, and added that they are looking into all such cases.
About nine million voters’ names were dropped from the electoral roll during the presidential elections in West Bengal ahead of the Assembly elections. While more than 6.3 million names were dropped from the electoral list in the final list, the fate of 2.7 million others is now at stake as their cases are still pending in the appellate courts set up by the Supreme Court.
