The post Election Commission Extends Claims and Objections Deadline for SIR Until March 6 appeared first on The Edge Media.
]]>Chief Electoral Officer Navdeep Rinwa said the extension was granted to ensure transparency and give voters adequate opportunity to verify their details ahead of the ongoing Assembly election preparations. He clarified that the entire process is being carried out in a time bound and transparent manner.
According to officials, the draft electoral roll was published on February 27. Notices were issued to nearly nine percent of voters whose verification was required. So far, hearings have been completed for a large number of these cases, while the remaining hearings will conclude by March 27.
Rinwa stated that names will not be removed from the voter list without due process. Any deletion will only take place after proper verification and hearings. If a complaint is found to be baseless, no further action will be taken. The Election Commission has instructed Booth Level Officers not to remove names arbitrarily.
Officials also clarified that a voter can raise objections only within the same Assembly constituency. Each voter is allowed to submit only one form with supporting documents. Political parties have submitted a large number of Booth Level Agent forms, with Form 10 submissions crossing 5.79 lakh.
As of now, more than 9.50 lakh voters have submitted Form 8 for correction of details such as name and address. On February 5 alone, a record 59,840 Form 8 applications were received.
Door to door verification is also underway. Notices are being delivered to around 3.26 crore voters, including approximately 2.22 crore migrated voters. Booth Level Officers are visiting households to verify details and resolve cases through document verification.
The Election Commission has also increased the number of Assistant Electoral Registration Officers to speed up hearings. The total number of AEROs has now risen to 8,990 from 6,948 earlier.
Officials added that 1.04 crore voters who were not part of the 2003 electoral roll and 2.22 crore migrated voters are currently under verification. Notices have already reached over 86.27 lakh households, and hearings for more than 30.30 lakh cases have been completed.
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]]>The post This is not SIR. This is NRC in disguise. Samajwadi Party chief, Akhilesh Yadav alleges a “deep conspiracy” appeared first on The Edge Media.
]]>Speaking to reporters during his visit to Hyderabad, Yadav claimed that more than three crore voters in Uttar Pradesh are at risk of being struck off the rolls. He said the Election Commission should be working to increase voter participation rather than overseeing what he described as “large-scale deletions that threaten the very foundation of democracy.”
“If votes are removed in areas where the BJP has lost, it is nothing less than a conspiracy against democracy,” Yadav said. “This is not the purpose of SIR. This is NRC brought in quietly. They could not implement NRC openly, so they have introduced it under another name.”
Drawing parallels with the National Register of Citizens, Yadav argued that the documentation being sought during the SIR mirrors the same requirements associated with NRC. “If NRC were to be implemented, what documents would people need to show? The same documents are being demanded now,” he alleged.
Yadav also compared the SIR exercise to past policy decisions that, according to him, caused widespread hardship. “People are being troubled again, just like during demonetisation, the COVID period, and the rollout of GST,” he said.
During his Hyderabad visit, the former Uttar Pradesh chief minister attended the Vision India – AI Summit, underscoring the growing influence of artificial intelligence across sectors such as agriculture and healthcare. He said the initiative was aimed at shaping a roadmap for “Neo-India” driven by foresight rather than polarisation. “Politics should be about vision, not division,” he remarked.
On the ongoing Parliament Winter Session, Yadav took a sharp dig at the ruling dispensation, saying the most striking feature was that “some people who never sang Vande Mataram are suddenly eager to do so.”
Yadav also held meetings with Telangana Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy and senior leaders of the Bharat Rashtra Samithi, including working president K T Rama Rao. According to an official release, Reddy briefed him on the state government’s development and welfare initiatives.
The Samajwadi Party chief praised the Telangana government’s decision to recognise ‘Sadar’, a festival celebrated by the Yadav community in Hyderabad, as a state festival, calling it a gesture of social inclusion and cultural respect
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]]>The post Deaths of Two Booth Level Officers Raise Concerns Over Workload During Electoral Roll Revision appeared first on The Edge Media.
]]>West Bengal recorded its fourth booth level officer death, since the revision began on November 4, prompting a Trinamool Congress delegation to meet the full bench of the Election Commission in Delhi and accuse the poll body chief of carrying moral responsibility for the deaths.
Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav also attacked the ongoing revision process, calling it a large scale conspiracy against citizens that he claimed could create a situation more oppressive than the colonial period.
The special intensive revision is currently underway in twelve states and Union territories.
In Gujarat’s Mehsana district, Dinesh Raval, a 50 year old teacher, at a government primary school in Sudasana village, passed away from a heart attack at his home between Thursday night and Friday morning according to Sadasana police sub inspector Udaysinh Zala.
Opposition leaders and teachers’ unions linked his death to heavy workload and inadequate support for booth level officers, though police denied any connection between his duties and the incident
Congress spokesperson Manish Doshi stated that booth level officers are under intense pressure to complete assigned tasks within strict deadlines, while Gujarat State Primary Teacher Association president Digvijaysinh Jadeja said he had heard from other teachers that Raval had been experiencing stress due to his BLO responsibilities.
In West Bengal’s Murshidabad district, Zakir Hossain, a teacher in a state run primary school deployed as a booth level officer, collapsed on Thursday after reporting severe chest pain and was taken to a local hospital where he died later that night according to his family.
Relatives said Hossain had been struggling to balance his booth level duties with regular teaching, and claimed that his school did not relieve him from classroom responsibilities despite multiple requests, forcing him to juggle both roles.
Leaders of the Trinamool Congress, including Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, have accused the Election Commission of assigning an unreasonable and poorly planned workload to booth level officers.
The Bharatiya Janata Party rejected the allegations and argued that any stress faced by booth level officers stemmed from pressure exerted by the ruling Trinamool Congress rather than the Election Commission.
A ten member TMC delegation led by Rajya Sabha MP Derek O Brien met EC officials in Delhi and raised five questions regarding the deaths and the workload, but said they received no direct answers from Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar.
Mahua Moitra said the delegation submitted a list of forty individuals whose deaths they claim are linked to the revision process, but the Commission dismissed the list as unverified allegations.
Samajwadi Party leader Akhilesh Yadav posted a video on social media urging opposition parties, including NDA allies, to unite and expose what he described as a large scale plan by the BJP, warning that tampering with voter rolls could eventually lead to removal of names from land records, ration cards, caste certificates, social welfare lists, and even bank accounts.
BJP spokesperson Harishchandra Srivastava rejected Yadav’s comments and accused him of attempting to create fear and confusion among citizens.
Meanwhile, the Election Commission announced that Lakshadweep has become the first Union territory to complete full distribution and digitisation of enumeration forms under the special intensive revision.
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]]>The post Bombay High Court Seeks Responses on Plea Against Raj Thackeray appeared first on The Edge Media.
]]>The PIL was filed by advocate Ghanshyam Upadhyay, who asserted that Thackeray and members of his party had repeatedly targeted people, who do not speak Marathi and often focused on individuals, who migrated from other regions of the country. The petition also requested intervention and appropriate steps from the Election Commission.
Representing the petitioner, advocate Subhash Jha argued that such actions by the MNS typically escalate during the build up to elections.
A division bench of Chief Justice Shree Chandrashekhar and Justice Gautam Ankhad, ordered both the state government and the Election Commission to file their affidavits within four weeks.
The court also instructed the petitioner to remove references that label communities by region noting that the expression hate speech alone conveyed the point adequately.
According to the petition Raj Thackeray allegedly provoked acts of violence during a rally on July 5 by urging supporters to strike individuals who do not speak Marathi below the ear.
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]]>The post Congress Accuses BJP For Tempering EVMs appeared first on The Edge Media.
]]>“We have got allegations of strange movement of EVMs in Ghazipur, Jhansi, Dumariyaganj, Saran, Chamoli, Fatehabad, and Punjab as well,” Congress spokesperson Rajeev Shukla told reporters at the party’s headquarter.
According to Rajeev Shukla, a team of opposition parties would discuss the issue with the Election Commission on Tuesday.
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]]>The post TMC demonstration surrounding BJP’s Dilip Ghosh disrupts campaign in Bhawanipore. appeared first on The Edge Media.
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On Monday afternoon, Trinamool Congress (TMC) workers disrupted the final campaigning for the September 30 bypoll in Kolkata’s Bhawanipore assembly seat, impeding Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) national vice-president Dilip Ghosh and shouting “go back” shouts. As a result, the BJP decided to file a petition with the Election Commission, requesting that the election in Bhawanipore be called off.
Ghosh was canvassing on foot at Jadu Babu Bazar when the event occurred. When his companions got into a confrontation with TMC workers, Bharat Narayan Singh, a BJP worker, suffered minor injuries.
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]]>The post EC announces by-polls to 1 assembly constituency of Odisha and 3 assembly constituencies in West Bengal appeared first on The Edge Media.
]]>The announcement would come as a relief to Mamata Banerjee who lost the assembly election from Nandigram. She needs to win this by-poll and get elected to continue as the CM.
Mamata Banerjee had lost the election from her aide turned rival Suvendu Adhikari.
She is expected to file a nomination from Bhabanipur in Kolkata, which was vacated by winning TMC candidate Sobhandeb Chattopadhyay, days after the results were declared.
She is expected to file a nomination from Bhabanipur in Kolkata, which was vacated by winning TMC candidate Sobhandeb Chattopadhyay, days after the results were declared.
The Trinamool Congress’ (TMC) had requested the Election Commission in July, to conduct by-elections to fill seven casual vacancies in the State Legislative Assembly of West Bengal.
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]]>The post Corona bomb explodes in Kolkata between Bengal elections appeared first on The Edge Media.
]]>If someone is not getting a bed, then some patient is getting lack of oxygen. In the midst of all this, assembly elections are also going on in West Bengal. During the elections, records of Corona have started coming up in Bengal.
The condition of Kolkata, the state capital, has become worse. Here, one out of every two people who are undergoing RT-PCR examination of Corona is found to be positive. At the same time, when it comes to the state level, the corona report of one in four people is coming out positive.
This number is five times higher than the previous month. A month ago, only one person’s report was found positive in 20 Corona investigations.
According to the Times of India report, a doctor from the lab who performed the RT-PCR test says, “Labs in Kolkata and its surrounding areas, which are being tested by Corona, have a positive rate of 45-55% in their tests.”
At the same time, in other cities of the state, this level is around 24 per cent. It was only five per cent a month ago. ”The senior doctor further said that the positivity rate is actually much higher.
There are many people who have mild or no symptoms at all and are infected with corona, but they have not yet been tested. We are not investigating according to need. We should not back down from Corona’s investigation at this time.
Corona testing of 25,766 people took place in Bengal on April 1, in which only 1274 people were found positive. This positivity rate was 4.9 percent. 55,060 people were screened on Saturday, of which a record 14,281 people were found positive.
This rate is 25.9 percent. Microbiologist Bhaskar Narayan Chaudhary of Peerless Hospital said that the reason behind the rapid infection is mutant virus, which is infecting more and more people in a very short time.
Another reason is that among those who have symptoms, only a few people are going to get corona examined.
Positiveness rate rises to 55 percent At the same time, the chairman of another hospital said that the positivity rate in our lab has increased to 50%. The pressure on testing samples is very high. But it is good that people are coming forward to get testing done.
The sooner we can find corona infects and isolate them, the better it will be for us. Another official also said that the positivity rate in his lab has gone up to 55 per cent. Explain that the total number of infected people has increased to 7,28,061 in West Bengal on
Saturday after the maximum number of 14,281 cases of corona virus infection were reported in a single day. After the death of 59 more patients due to infection, the total number of dead has gone up to 10,884.
Assembly elections are going on in West Bengal these days. The Election Commission is conducting elections in eight phases this time.
Voting for the seventh phase will be held on 36 seats tomorrow (Monday). During the West Bengal assembly elections, the leaders of various parties kept organizing rallies continuously.
Although a large number of general public also demanded cancellation of the election rallies, the Election Commission and leaders of parties took decisions on it after more than half the phase of voting had passed.
On Thursday, seven days before the last phase, the Election Commission has banned road shows and vehicle rallies in West Bengal with immediate effect.
Along with the ban, the Election Commission also said that many political party candidates are not following the safety norms in public events. The Election Commission has allowed a maximum of 500 people to attend the election.
The Commission’s decision came a few days ago when the Calcutta High Court expressed its displeasure with the Election Commission over the implementation of the anti-covid-19 rules during the election process.
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]]>The post West Bengal elections: Issues of common people buried in the noise of ‘Khela Hobe’ and ‘Paribortan’ appeared first on The Edge Media.
]]>In the first phase, voting is being held for 30 seats in Bankura, Purulia and Jhargram districts apart from East and West Medinipur.
Even on the last day of campaigning, where Union Home Minister Amit Shah, Defense Minister Rajnath Singh to Mithun Chakraborty held rallies on the one hand, on the other hand, TMC’s star campaigner Mamta Banerjee addressed four rallies using helicopters and wheelchairs.
Among the seats to be voted on in the first round, there are 23 seats in the notorious area known as Jungle Mahal.
The remaining seven seats are in East Medinipur. Voting on the remaining seats of the area will be held on April 1 in the second phase. These include the high-profile seat of Nandigram where Mamata Banerjee is competing with Shubhendu Adhikari, the closest she ever had.
Apart from Purulia, the most important seats of this round include Chhatna seat of Bankura and Kharagpur in West Medinipur district and Medinipur seat of East Medinipur.
The importance of Purulia and Chhatna is more because the margin of victory here in the 2016 elections was less than five thousand votes. The Purulia seat was then won by Congress’s Sudeep Mukherjee and the Chhatna seat was occupied by the Left’s ally RSP.
In 2016, state BJP President Dilip Ghosh won Kharagpur seat. But in the by-election held here after TMC won the Lok Sabha elections in the year 2019, TMC took this seat.
The TMC has fielded Dinesen Rai, the candidate who won the by-election this time.
Where does the Left that ruled Bengal for decades stand today?
Instead of former MLA Mrigendra Nath Maiti on Medinipur seat, actress Jun Malia’s contest on the TMC ticket has become interesting here.
In the first phase, polling will be held in seven out of 16 seats in East Medinipur, six out of 15 seats in West Medinipur and four out of 12 seats in Bankura, while all nine seats of Purulia and all four seats of Jhargram will be voted in this round.
At present, 191 candidates are in the fray for the 30 seats of this round. There are 21 women among them. Among these candidates, criminal cases are registered against one-fourth, while 19 millionaires are also included in the race.
The average assets of the candidates in the first round are around 43.77 lakh rupees and about half of them are graduates.
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]]>The post Mamta Banerjee will contest elections from Nandigram, rally shows strength in Shubhendu’s stronghold appeared first on The Edge Media.
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West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has announced that she will contest assembly elections from Nandigram this time. Mamata’s declaration about the ongoing political war between the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Trinamool Congress has many implications being extracted. Earlier Mamta Banerjee has been contesting from Bhawanipur.
Assembly elections are due in West Bengal this year and the political war continues. On Monday, West Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee held an election meeting in Nandigram, where she was targeted by the Bharatiya Janata Party. Mamta appealed to the state unit president on the stage itself and a decision was taken immediately. . Mamta Banerjee said that this time also TMC government will be formed in Bengal and TMC will get more than 200 seats.Mamta Banerjee also took a dig at the Subhendu officer who went to BJP from TMC here and said that he did not need to take knowledge from anyone on who did the Nandigram movement. Today farmers are also agitating and BJP should immediately withdraw all three agricultural laws.
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