Polls a week away, 12,000 Murshidabad voters remain in a limbo | Ground report

Md Sharif Ahmed is among the 795 residents in Murshidabad’s Dakshin Mahadeb Nagar booth whose names remain under adjudication, even as the Election Commission (EC) has frozen the electoral roll, leaving several such cases unresolved, in a serious breach of due process.

The due process, as reflected in the EC’s own guidelines, requires that every flagged voter be heard and adjudicated before any supplementary list is published and the roll is frozen.

But with cases still under adjudication, that essential sequence appears to have been bypassed, a shortcoming that many experts say has left these “under-adjudicated” voters in a limbo.

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“By keeping the names under adjudication, the EC has essentially taken away even their right to appeal before a tribunal,” pointed out Ranjit Sur, vice-president of the Association for Protection of Democratic Rights (APDR).

“The appellate remedy can be invoked only after an order is passed, in this context, after a voter’s name is deleted from the electoral roll,” he added.

Voters in limbo

Ahmed and others in Mahadeb Nagar echoed these concerns, saying they remain in a state of uncertainty with no clarity on their status.

Many of these residents possess not only the requisite documents listed by the EC as proof of eligibility, such as passports and educational certificates, but also legacy documents predating India’s independence.

Shame on the Election Commission. I am telling you (referring to EC), either let us vote or cancel the elections — Moumina Khatun, a young voter of Murshidabad

Ahmed showed The Federal a land deed, registered in 1924, in his grandfather’s name. “I produced land records registered in my grandfather’s name and my father’s name, the latter from 1974, before the EC’s appointed observers during the hearing. As for my own documents, I submitted my passport, which I obtained using a deed from 1971,” he said.

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Another resident, Md Abdur Rob Shamim, pointed out, “I have land deeds in my grandfather’s and father’s names dating back to 1942, yet my name is still under adjudication.”

This is not just the story of one booth. Many voters across booths in minority-dominated Murshidabad face a similar state of uncertainty.

12,000 voters under adjudication

Nearly 2,900 people across five booths in the Mahadeb Nagar Panchayat of Farakka block are still under adjudication.

Overall, more than 12,000 voters in the district remain under adjudication as of April 14, sources said. The district had over 11.1 lakh voters under adjudication, of which around 10.88 lakh cases have been disposed of.

The EC has so far not explained what prevented the adjudication of these voters. Nor is there any clarity on the grounds on which their names were placed under adjudication.

“In most other booths, supplementary lists have been published. But in my booth, number 187, and in four or five other booths in our Mahadeb Nagar Panchayat, no supplementary list has been published,” booth-level officer (BLO) MD Asfak Hossain revealed.

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Of the 1,327 voters in the booth, only 522 have been included in the electoral roll, with the remaining 795 still under adjudication.

“Many residents here, including teachers and doctors, remain under adjudication despite possessing long-standing documents, some even dating back decades. Yet no clear decision has been taken; their names have neither been approved nor deleted, effectively leaving the entire booth in a state of uncertainty.

“This has created multiple difficulties on the ground. With their cases still pending and no final order issued, villagers are also unable to approach a tribunal, as the right to appeal arises only after a decision is made,” Hossain stated.

Intent of EC questioned

Freezing the electoral roll without adjudicating all the cases shows how whimsically the EC has handled the entire exercise, making a travesty of justice and a mockery of democracy, opined Arindam Das, one of the lawyers challenging the SIR process in the court and raising concerns over the manner in which voter verification and adjudication have been conducted.

Such flaws on the part of the poll panel have raised questions about its intent.

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“The EC has become a completely failed institution. What better example of its failure than the courts having to step in to clear the mess created by the poll panel?” said Congress spokesperson Chandan Ghosh Choudhury.

Conducting elections while keeping valid voters out of the process is a violation of constitutional rights, he added.

Shift in political dynamics

Because of such arbitrary deletion, political dynamics have changed in some constituencies.

“Take the example of the Farakka assembly segment,” said Kamal Hossain, a Trinamool Congress panchayat samiti member of Mahadeb Nagar GP. “In the last parliamentary elections, this segment gave the Congress a lead of around 35,000 votes over the BJP candidate, while Trinamool finished third with a similar vote count.”

I have land deeds in my grandfather’s and father’s names dating back to 1942, yet my name is still under adjudication — Md Abdur Rob Shamim, Murshidabad resident

“Now, under the SIR, around 40,000 names have either been deleted or put under adjudication. Of these, nearly 80 per cent are Muslims,” he added. “These figures themselves point to the larger game plan behind the entire SIR exercise.”

A sense of unease prevails

Back in Mahadeb Nagar, anxiety hangs heavy in its lanes and bylanes, as nearly every household has one or more members who have failed to make it onto the electoral roll.

When The Federal visited the remote village, residents, including women, gathered in large groups to share their plight, in a bid to let the outside world know how they had been wronged.

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“Shame on the Election Commission. I am telling you (referring to EC), either let us vote or cancel the elections,” demanded Moumina Khatun, a young woman, the anger in her voice unmistakable as anxiety leads to frustration.