A few hundred Aadhaar cards, voter photo ID cards and Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MNREG) business cards were recovered from several Trinamool Congress (TMC) offices in West Bengal on Sunday by local residents and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) workers who alleged that these cards had been forcibly taken from voters before the previous elections.
They claimed that real voters were forced to stay home on election days.
In one incident, more than 100 Aadhaar cards were found at a TMC office in Basanti Debi Colony in Bidhan Nagar Assembly constituency in the eastern suburbs of Kolkata. A number of these tickets were issued in 2021, when the TMC won 213 of the 294 seats in West Bengal against the BJP’s 77 seats.
“Most of the cards were still in sealed postal envelopes, indicating that they had not been delivered to the beneficiaries,” said a police officer in Bidhan Nagar, requesting anonymity. “Local residents also found some land deeds locked in a bag.”
“Real voters were threatened and prevented from exercising their right to vote. We have said this time and again during our campaign. Our stand has been vindicated today,” said Dr Shardwat Mukherjee, an oncologist and newly elected BJP legislator from Bidhan Nagar.
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Former Fire Services Minister Sujit Bose, who had won the Bidhan Nagar seat four times in a row since 2009 before being defeated, was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) on May 11 on charges of corruption in recruitment processes in civic bodies and was remanded to the federal agency.
Shamli Naskar, a TMC councilor from the district where the party office is located, said she knew nothing about Aadhaar cards.
“This allegation is fabricated. I don’t think our party can stoop to this level. Let there be an investigation,” Naskar said.
In a second incident, a few hundred voter identity cards were found dumped in a field in Kirnahar area of Birbhum district, a TMC stronghold for the past 15 years.
“Local residents informed the authorities and the cards were confiscated,” a police officer said.
BJP state vice president Jagannath Chattopadhyay, who won Sewri seat from Birbhum, said, “There must be thousands of such cards lying in TMC offices across the district. TMC has created a reign of terror but now the tables have turned. The law will take its own course.”
In a third incident, BJP supporters recovered a few hundred MNREG job cards and voter ID cards from the TMC office in Garbeta in West Midnapore district.
Such cards will be found in all TMC offices if there is a search,” said Palash Das, a local BJP worker.
None of the TMC leaders in the region commented on the recoveries.
On Sunday afternoon, BJP state president Samik Bhattacharya addressed voters at the Valta assembly headquarters of South 24 Parganas district where bypolls will be held on May 21 because on April 29, when the constituency went to polls, voters claimed that TMC MLA Jehangir Khan and his men threatened them with dire consequences if they left their homes.
Saidul Khan, the MLA’s son-in-law, was arrested on Friday on charges of assault and attempted murder.
“The people of Valta cannot cast their votes freely. Before the 2021 elections, announcements were made over loudspeakers in mosques, directing people to stay at home. Fear no more. The BJP government is here. TMC will soon become a thing of the past,” Bhattacharya told voters at the rally.
Ahead of the recent elections, which witnessed an unprecedented voter turnout of 93% and the BJP’s first win in the state in 207 seats, TMC chief Mamata Banerjee had alleged that the deletion and delisting of voters during the Special Intensive Review (SIR) of the electoral roll in Bengal had dealt a blow to the democratic rights of the people.
There were about 76.6 million voters in the state before the revolution began. This resulted in the removal of about 9.1 million names. This includes the early removal of approximately 6.3 million names and an additional 2.7 million voters who were declared ineligible after the matter was decided.
The number of names deleted is highest in Murshidabad and Malda districts, where the Muslim population is 66.28% and 52.27% respectively – the highest in the state, according to the 2011 census.
On the other hand, the BJP alleged that while thousands of Hindu voters were prevented from casting their votes in one election after another, infiltrators from Bangladesh were allowed to settle in and provide them with voter identity cards and voter identity cards.
On Friday night, residents of Hingalganj in North 24 Parganas district handed over Saidul Ghazi, an alleged infiltrator from Satkhira, Bangladesh, to the police, saying he had voted in the last election.
“Jainal Abedin, a member of the local TMC gram panchayat, gave me voter ID cards and voter ID cards declaring his parents as my parents,” Ghazi said before police arrested him. Police said Abedin was on the run.
HT tried to contact TMC state vice president Jai Prakash Majumdar and state general secretary Kunal Ghosh for comments but neither of them returned calls.
