Kolkata: The Election Commission’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) to clean up the voters’ list ahead of the next year’s Assembly polls in West Bengal has cast a spell of fear, which has claimed 14 lives, including eight deaths by suicide, so far.
This has set a dangerous trend that the state had never seen earlier. All of these casualties were reported from the districts, bringing out thin awareness and confidence among the rural voters about such a mammoth drive within three months.
The deceased were Pradip Kar (57) and Kakoli Sarkar (32) of North 24 Parganas, Khitish Majumdar (95) of West Midnapore, Hasina Begum (60) and Bithi Das (49) of Hooghly, Zahir Mal (30) of Howrah, Bimal Santra (57) of Burdwan East, Sheikh Sirajuddin (70) of East Midnapore, Sahabuddin Paik (45) and Safiul Ghazi (35) of South 24 Parganas, Tarak Saha (52) and Mohul Sheikh (45) of Murshidabad, and Biman Pramanik (37) of Birbhum and Laluram Barman (80) of Jalpaiguri.
While Kar, Sarkar, Majumdar, Das, Mal, Ghazi, Saha and Sheikh ended their lives either by hanging or consuming poison in panic, others suffered heart attacks in anxiety and died, according to their family members. Meanwhile, there were also additional incidents of suicide attempts.
At Dinhata in Cooch Behar of North Bengal, a farmer, Khairul Sheikh (63), tried to kill himself by consuming pesticide. He was admitted to a hospital. At Khardaha in North 24 Parganas, a youth, Akbar Ali, took poison but was rescued by his wife immediately.
The rally of deaths however unfolded from the day after the announcement of the exercise by the EC in New Delhi on October 27. Those who died were worried about their future after failing to find their names in the last SIR voters’ list and trace their identity proof, which are required to apply for the current one within a month, their family members said.
They also feared losing their citizenship and facing deportation in view of linking the current SIR to the citizenship issue by two main political rivals, Trinamul Congress and BJP, who have already turned the drive into a key agenda of their electoral battle.
While TMC supremo and chief minister Mamata Banerjee and her MP nephew Abhishek Banerjee have called the SIR a “backdoor” to the National Register of Citizens, Nandigram BJP MLA and Leader of the Opposition Suvendu Adhikari predicted the deletion of one crore voters’ names in the exercise.
Interestingly, the state had last seen an SIR of the voters’ list in 2002, when the CPI(M)-led Left Front was in power, and the scrutiny of the voters’ list was not a poll issue then for either the ruling or the Opposition parties. The duration was also longer than what it is this time.