New Delhi, Oct. 20 -- Trinamool Congress on Tuesday asked why Bengal was treated differently by the Election Commission of India as a report in the Hindustan Times claimed that ECI portal ECINET came with a feature that could bar Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) and Assistant EROs only in West Bengal from reviewing voters' enumeration forms and viewing the notice and hearing dashboard.
Reacting to the report in the newspaper, the TMC demanded an explanation from the Election Commission as to why the rules for Bengal Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls are different from those in other states.
"Who authorised these Bengal-specific changes, and Why?'' the TMC wanted to know.
According to HT report a third-party audit of the ECI portal's publicly served code found the feature present in code fetched as recently as October 19. No such exclusion for EROs and AEROs in the code for any other state was found, it said.
Reacting to the report, the TMC said in a statement: "The audit findings raise serious questions about the Election Commission's role and the lack of transparency of the entire process. Every step that appears to disadvantage Bengal's voters demands scrutiny."
"The ECI must explain why Bengal was treated differently, who is accountable, and what safeguards exist to ensure every eligible voter's rights are protected. An institution entrusted with safeguarding democracy cannot afford to leave such serious questions unanswered.
When will the CEC take responsibility and resign?," the TMC said.
The latest audit findings come amid ongoing protests across the country demanding resignation of the Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar and scrapping of the SIR.
The audit -- carried out on October 2, 6, 7, and 9 -- by Charchagram data scientist Saurav Rajput found that the "View Enumeration Form Details" tile was available to officers on the SIR Phase II landing page, with an exception written into the code for West Bengal, the Hindustan Times report claimed.
The View Enumeration Form Details page lists each form with its constituency, part and serial number, the elector's voter ID number and name, who submitted the form, the documents uploaded, and the booth level officer's recommendation. It also holds documents labelled "ERO/AERO-Document" and "Hearing-Order", and has buttons to send a form back to the BLO or flag an elector as a previous-SIR elector.
The report said that eventually, 2.71 million people were disenfranchised. Many of those appeals, as well as appeals by people against the inclusion of people -- in all about 3.8 million -- are still pending before the tribunals. In the past two months, several judges presiding on tribunals have complained about ECI's portal and backend processes, saying it impeded their work.
Trinamool Congress MP Abhishek Banerjee, on February 21, had alleged that EROs in Bengal were "no longer able to monitor" AEROs' progress on ECINET in the conduct of SIR. He called it a violation of Sections 13B and 13C of the Representation of the People Act, which make the ERO responsible for preparing the rolls and place AEROs under the ERO's control.
Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Millennium Post.