West Bengal’s Hooghly district witnessed ugly scenes Monday when TMC activists, under MLA Asit Mazumdar’s lead, allegedly ripped apart Form-7s at the SDO headquarters. The provocative act during draft voter list hearings sparked brawls with BJP counterparts, exposing raw political nerves.
The SIR exercise aims to cleanse rolls of invalid entries, but TMC’s intrusion turned routine proceedings into a battlefield. Witnesses saw party members trashing deletion applications in full view, prompting outrage and immediate skirmishes.
Denying his group’s role, Mazumdar flipped the script: TMC was protesting BJP’s ‘fake’ Form-7 filings to oust legitimate voters. He slammed Sukanta Majumdar’s 1.26 lakh deletion figure for Hooghly as suspicious, hinting at official bias toward the BJP.
Voters vented fury at police passivity, which let tensions boil over unchecked. BJP’s Suresh Saha condemned it as a calculated TMC assault, backed by administration insiders, to retain deadwood voters for rigging.
As dust settles, the clash reverberates through Bengal’s polarized politics. It begs questions on enforcement lapses and the sanctity of voter data. Urgent reforms are needed to shield revisions from partisan sabotage, ensuring every vote counts fairly.