Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Aug 30: A md rush is on in the border districts in West Bengal to procure a birth certificate, a rarity among the rural folks, fearing elimination of their names from the voters list, and ultimately pushed out, in case the Election Commission of India (ECI) order a Bihar-type “Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the voters’ list in West Bengal.
In A letter to the West Bengal Chief Secretary and District Election Officers, the ECI had set the ball rolling on Wednesday for the revision of electoral rolls in the state that is bound for polls next year, following Bihar later this year.
In Bengal’s Murshidabad and Malda districts bordering Bangladesh, dominated by the Muslim community, the preparations have been on – for a while. At municipalities, in gram panchayats and in courts, people have been lining up with stamp papers – paying double their usual cost of Rs 10 each – to have birth certificates corrected, digitised or “delayed new ones” issued.
Owning a birth certificate is not common in these parts – like in other rural areas of the country. However, the fear is that a Bihar-like SIR Special Intensive Revision may be followed by a drive to compile National Register of Citizens (NRC) and a birth certificate could decide whether one is certified as an Indian or is deported.
In a notification on July 29, the Trinamool Congress government, which has questioned the SIR, issued a notification laying down clear guidelines regarding birth records. The people are lining up on the ground to ensure that they meet the same.
There are instances of the people travelling from distances and queuing up before the municipality to authenticate a birth certificate issued by a private nursing home for the person’s daughter born 20 years ago. “The buzz in our village says birth certificates by private nursing homes will not do,” the elderly man said.
That’s the word in her village too, says Samirun Bibi, who has come from Nowda, 38 km away, for digital records of birth certificates of her two sons, 20 and 18, who are both migrant workers. “We cannot take any chances. We need to do this as soon as possible. Any day, they will bring in the SIR and then an NRC. First our voting rights will be gone, then we will be driven out.”
The Mamata Banerjee government, which has accused the BJP of using SIR to target the Muslim community, has activated the official machinery to help people with their documents. At the Berhampore Municipality, there are separate makeshift kiosks for ‘form collection’, ‘correction’, ‘delayed new birth certificates’ and ‘digitisation’, with at least 34 officials at hand. Those who had non-institutionalised deliveries or never got birth certificates made qualify for ‘delayed new birth certificates.’
Berhampore Municipality Chairman Narugopal Mukherjee says “there has been absolute panic for the past 10 days”. “We used to get 10-12 applications for digitisation or correction of birth certificates daily; that number is now 500-600. People have been standing here since 7 am.”
Murshidabad District Magistrate Rajarshi Mitra says Sub-Division Officers (SDOs) and Block Medical Officers (BMOs) are handling the process. “A digitised record is proof that a birth certificate is not fake. It will help whenever there is a check,” Mitra says. Abhijit Sarkar, an official with the ‘Birth and Death Records Department’, who is managing the ‘corrections’ kiosk, says: “We are trying to make people understand that there is no need for the rush. But they are not listening.”
There are similar scenes at the Murshidabad Municipality around 12 km away, with many people losing their patience as the queues crawl. Here, officials have accessed the full birth and death records of the municipality since 1998, as well as the partial lists before it, and kept the same in two rooms of the building. A senior official says: “Around 120 to 150 people come every day. We are a small municipality, and it is tough. Some people get agitated when asked to show proper records or told to go to court for corrections.”
The court that is the next stop for many applicants whose names carry confusions. The District Judges Court, Murshidabad, has rows of tables placed under a makeshift structure, with advocates handling applications. Lawyers helping in filing affidavits for securing birth certificates or the cyber cafes in rural areas printing out digitalised birth certificates are going through a very busy time and also filling up their coffers.
Mohammed Ali, the TMC MLA from Lalgola in Murshidabad, says: “No political party is against the SIR. It happened in Bengal in 2002. But there is a conspiracy to bring in an NRC through the backdoor. That is why people are running to panchayat offices, municipalities and courts.”
Senior Congress leader Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, former Lok Sabha MP from Berhampore, says the state government can contain the panic through awareness campaigns, but is not doing this deliberately. “Two parties are benefiting from this, Mamata Banerjee and the BJP… In the 2021 polls too, she took electoral advantage by creating an NRC scare. Now, she is again aiming for political dividends by creating fear among the minorities.”
CPI(M) Central Committee member Sujan Chakraborty blamed the EC for the panic because of the kind of documents it is asking for the SIR in Bihar. “People fear their voting rights will be snatched.” The BJP state president and MP Samik Bhattacharya blamed the TMC for “creating the panic” and “facilitating this rush”. “It is true that a lot of people hold fake documents including Aadhaar cards in Bengal. We have been alerting the EC on this from time to time,” he says.