Kolkata: A bag containing hundreds of voter cards was recovered from a heap of garbage near the National Highway 12 in Nadia district’s Santipur area of West Bengal Wednesday morning.
This is the second such incident in the district within a fortnight and has stirred concern among residents and political parties, especially as the Election Commission is carrying out the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise in the state.
Local residents noticed the dumped bag first. When they opened it and found what appeared to be voter cards, they informed the police. Officers from the Ranaghat Police District arrived and seized the materials. Many of the cards reportedly carried addresses from North 24 Parganas. Along with the voter cards, other documents were also found.
A senior officer of the Ranaghat Police District said, “We have recovered the cards. It is being investigated whether these are genuine or fake cards.”
The incident has taken on a political colour because Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is scheduled to visit the district on Thursday to attend several programmes, including a public meeting in Krishnanagar. The recovery triggered a war of words between the leaders of the TMC and the BJP.
Tapan Sarkar, a local Trinamool leader and member of the Santipur Panchayat Samiti, alleged, “The Chief Minister will be passing through National Highway 12. So before that, all these cards have been taken from other districts and dumped here. This is the work of the BJP. In fact, they are trying to humiliate Mamata Banerjee through this act.”
The BJP rejected the charge and said that it was the outcome of the ongoing SIR exercise in the state.
“The area from where the bag containing voter cards was recovered is controlled by the TMC. Votes were cast with these cards in previous elections. With the SIR exercise in full swing, the Trinamool Congress destroyed such cards as they will be of no use anymore,” alleged Somnath Kar, BJP’s Ranaghat organisational district secretary.
December 2, about 100 duplicate and fake voter cards were found in a drain in Nabadwip, also in Nadia district. The names and addresses on those cards matched entries of some local residents, although their original voter cards remained with them.
The previous incident had already raised questions on where the duplicate cards came from and how they were produced, and the latest recovery has deepened the concerns.