Daijiworld Media Network - Kolkata

Kolkata, Mar 3: The Trinamool Congress (TMC) has gone into damage control after the Election Commission of India (ECI) on Sunday indirectly refuted Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s allegations of duplicate voters in West Bengal.

Last week, Banerjee accused the BJP of enrolling voters from other states in West Bengal’s electoral rolls and cited instances of electors from different states sharing identical EPIC numbers. However, the ECI clarified that duplicate EPIC numbers do not indicate fake voters but rather result from the use of identical alphanumeric series across states or Union Territories.

Following the ECI’s clarification, TMC state general secretary Kunal Ghosh countered, claiming that the commission had, in a way, validated Banerjee’s allegations. He alleged that after TMC exposed the issue, the ECI was now scrambling for damage control.

“The complaint about the same voter’s name appearing in multiple states has been validated, but how it happened remains unanswered,” Ghosh asserted, adding that TMC would continue its scrutiny of the voter list as per Banerjee’s directive.

Despite the ECI’s statement, Ghosh maintained that TMC would not rely on their assurances and would proceed with booth-wise and address-wise verification of the voter rolls.