The Election Commission website incorrectly showed that all voters in West Bengal are under adjudication in the claims process of the special intensive revision of the electoral rolls, the Trinamool Congress alleged on Wednesday.
This has caused panic among the voters, the party claimed.
While the problem was later resolved, it highlighted the “serious technical glitches and faulty software” used by the poll panel, party MP Mahua Moitra said.
“How can a software maintained with taxpayers’ money be so error-prone and unreliable?” Moitra asked on social media. “What concrete steps has the Election Commission taken to fix these recurring issues? Instead of addressing matters of such grave importance that affect millions of voters, the Vanish Commission is busy enabling [the Bharatiya Janata Party].”
West Bengal is among the 12 states and Union Territories where the special intensive revision of the electoral roll was undertaken.
On February 28, the Election Commission published the final electoral roll for West Bengal, showing that more than 61 lakh voters had been excluded.
However, the process continued with about 60 lakh “doubtful and pending” cases remaining “under adjudication” based on their objections to their exclusions from the draft rolls published in December.
On Monday, a batch of names approved by judicial officers was added to the rolls through the first supplementary list published. Of the 60 lakh pending cases, 29 lakh had been adjudicated.
However, the poll panel has not specified how many voters have been added to or dropped off the list.
The Economic Times reported that when the supplementary list was made available online on Monday, there were technical glitches, server problems, downloads were slow and the PDF files could not be downloaded.
On February 20, the Supreme Court ordered that judicial officers of the rank of district judge or additional district judge be appointed to help complete the revision exercise in the state amid a tussle between the Trinamool Congress government and the Election Commission.
West Bengal Chief Minister had moved the Supreme Court against the exercise, raising concerns that voter roll revision poses an immediate and irreversible risk of mass disenfranchisement of eligible electors in the Assembly elections. She sought the court’s direction that the elections be conducted on the basis of the existing electoral rolls prepared last year.
The Assembly elections in the state will be held in two phases on April 23 and April 29. The results in all states will be announced on May 4.
Problem rectified, says poll panel
The Economic Times quoted West Bengal’s Chief Electoral Officer Manoj Kumar Agarwal as saying on Tuesday that “in the initial stages, there are technical glitches”. He added that the problems will be “resolved after a few hours”.
On Wednesday, PTI quoted a polling official as saying that the Election Commission was examining what had caused the technical glitch that briefly showed all voters in the state being “under adjudication”.
“At one point, the system erroneously reflected that all electors in the state were under adjudication,” the newspaper quoted an unidentified official as saying. “This was not the case, and it was purely a display error.”
The problem has been rectified, the official said.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday verbally observed that the special intensive revision of the electoral rolls had been conducted smoothly in all states except in West Bengal.
Also read: As polls knock, why is Bengal’s SIR in a state of chaos with no end in sight?
On Wednesday, Moitra alleged that the Election Commission had appointed the husband of a BJP leader from Bihar as the police observer in Bengal’s Malda.
“At the same time, central forces are being misused as extra hands for BJP, with personnel carrying campaign materials for the party’s prachar [publicity] in Bankura,” she alleged.
This is a “dangerous assault” on electoral integrity, the Trinamool Congress leader said.
The Assembly elections in West Bengal will be held in two phases on April 23 and April 29. The votes will be counted on May 4.
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