In a shocking development, the Election Commission of India (ECI) has called the two sons of senior Trinamul Congress leader and Lok Sabha Chief Whip Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar to appear before it in connection with claims and objections to the draft electoral roll, the process for which began on Saturday.
Acknowledging the notices, Ghosh accused the poll panel of turning the revision exercise in West Bengal into a “mockery.”
She said the notices were issued as the names of her two sons, Biswanath and Baidyanath, both doctors, were absent from the draft voters’ list released on 16 December.
According to Ghosh, the commission has also summoned her mother and younger sister, both residents of Madhyamgram, North 24-Parganas, for the hearing, as their names were also missing from the draft electoral roll.
She questioned how such omissions could occur despite her family’s long public record.
“My sons are government employees. Their late father, Sudarshan Ghosh Dastidar, was a former West Bengal cabinet minister, and I have been a Member of Parliament since 2009.
Even then, my family members are being summoned. This clearly shows what the Special Intensive Revision is being used for harassment in the garb of verification,” she alleged.
The Trinamul Congress MP reiterated that her party had consistently maintained that serious errors were inevitable when a detailed revision process, usually spread over two years, was sought to be completed within just two months.
The episode has added to a growing list of controversies in which relatives of Trinamul Congress legislators have been drawn into the claims-and-objections process.
A day earlier, the ECI had issued similar summons to the mother, brother, and sister-in-law of Khandaghosh MLA Nabin Chandra Bag in East Burdwan district.
Bag, who has represented the Khandaghosh Assembly constituency, alleged that the notices were served despite his relatives’ names figuring in the voters’ list as far back as 2002.
Elected first as a CPI-M candidate, he switched to the Trinamul Congress ahead of the 2016 Assembly polls and has since retained the seat in both the 2016 and 2021 elections.