Kolkata, Oct. 22 -- "This happened on your watch Manoj Agarwal. Vote Chor," MAITC MP Mahua Moitra said in a social media post, accusing former West Bengal CEO Manoj Agarwal of being responsible for the Election Commission of India's (ECI) move to challenge the inclusion of 14.75 lakh voters whose names had been cleared by judicial officers during the SIR in Bengal.
Moitra questioned who had authorised the appeals and why they were filed, claiming that election commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had said they were unaware of who had initiated them. Referring to Agarwal's tenure as CEO, West Bengal, she demanded accountability and called him a "vote chor" and a "criminal".
According to reports, the ECI has appealed against the inclusion of 14,75,887 voters, accounting for 49.2 per cent of the 30 lakh voters cleared by judicial officers after examining their documents. Of the 60.06 lakh voters initially placed under adjudication, 32.68 lakh were found eligible and 27.16 lakh were declared ineligible.
The appeals against inclusion have been filed in 222 of the state's 294 constituencies, with Malda, Murshidabad and North Dinajpur accounting for 44.6 per cent of the total.
The report further noted that appellate tribunals had disposed of only 80,091 appeals, or 5.4 per cent of the total, while no tribunal had been able to upload orders since September 21 due to a dispute over the ECI portal's Aadhaar-based
login requirement.
Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Millennium Post.