West Bengal government has planned a host of measures to prevent the inclusion of ‘ghost voters’ in the electoral rolls after names of many phony voters were found in the voter list.
State chief secretary Manoj Pant instructed district magistrates and senior bureaucrats to keep a close eye on the revision of the electoral roll and rule out any potential irregularities during a virtual meeting on Saturday.
West Bengal will go to polls in 2026.
“The chief secretary has clearly instructed to verify each application so that no voter card is issued to phony voters. If an unusual volume of applications for voter cards Is received from a particular area, then a special surveillance has to be conducted there. If necessary, an investigation has to be carried out at the ground-level,” said a senior official at Nabanna, the state secretariat.
Sources in the state administration said ‘ghost voters’ have already crept into electoral rolls in many districts like South 24 Parganas and Nadia.
“In the meeting, the chief secretary made it clear that is administrative officials is found involved in this irregularities, strict action will be taken against him or her,” said the official.
Pant held the unscheduled meeting with bureaucrats after chief minister Mamata Banerjee recently alleged that manipulation is going on to fudge voter list online by using the Election Commission and central agencies are also involved in it.
The ruling TMC, too, made the accusation of manipulating the voter list targeting the BJP on its social media handle. Alleging that the BJP might attempt to replicate the “Delhi model” in Bengal, the TMC claimed that 4,500 ghost voters have been added to the electoral roll of a gram panchayat in South 24 Parganas district.
“In a shocking expose, the voter list of Baruipur’s Champahati panchayat in South 24 Parganas has reportedly surged by 4,500 in just seven months since the Lok Sabha elections, with many names from Murshidabad, Malda and Siliguri instead of local residents” the TMC said on its social media platform.
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