Anurag Thakur spreading lies about Diamond Harbour voters’ list: TMC

West Bengal's ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) on Thursday rubbished BJP MP Anurag Thakur’s claims of “large-scale irregularities” in the voters’ list of the state's Diamond Harbour Lok Sabha constituency and its adjacent Assembly segments as “bogus and baseless”.

In a rebuttal to the former Union minister’s claims about Diamond Harbour Assembly segment, which is part of the Lok Sabha constituency that has elected TMC national general-secretary Abhishek Banerjee three times in a row, party spokesperson Kunal Ghosh accused Thakur of either “deliberately spreading lies” or “having little understanding of ground realities” of rural and semi-urban Bengal.

On Thursday afternoon, Banerjee sent an “emissary” to Thakur’s residence in New Delhi, who claimed he handed over to the MP’s security guards a “flash drive” containing fact-check data regarding the electoral rolls of Diamond Harbour and its neighbouring seats.

Banerjee, nephew of West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee, has been a vocal critic of the Election Commission of India (ECI) since Lok Sabha Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi's 7 August press conference in Bengaluru, in which Gandhi presented evidence of what he called 'election fraud' or 'vote chori' by the ECI. Banerjee was also present at a dinner at Gandhi's residence along with major INDIA bloc and Opposition leaders the day after the press conference.

"Anurag Thakur's claim that the number of voters in Diamond Harbour has increased by 15 per cent in the last four years is completely untrue. The actual increase is 4.70 per cent in the Diamond Harbour Assembly segment and 4.09 per cent in the adjacent Falta segment,” Ghosh asserted.

“These records, containing the verified details of all voters, have been sent to him. Instead of spreading misinformation from a distance, he should come to the very address he is talking about, meet the residents face-to-face, and see the truth for himself,” he said.

Claiming “mass voter addition”, Thakur had alleged on Wednesday that in Diamond Harbour, out of 1,724 booths, 301 have seen a 15-per cent increase in the last four years, and all these booths were won by the TMC.

“Where is Abhishek Banerjee? He should see that in Diamond Harbour, the government is his, the BLOs are his, the BLAs are his — so, is this why he is winning elections? Is this not a game of fake voting?” Thakur had alleged.

Ghosh responded by stating that the figures quoted by the BJP leader were “misleading” and collected “with little homework”.

“At the cited House No. N001 of Booth No. 265 in Diamond Harbour, there are currently 41 electors, with the rest accounted for — one deceased, one living in Odisha, three married and moved, and one out of town for work,” he said, responding to Thakur’s claim that fake voters were registered at the said address where the father’s name of the same elector keeps repeatedly changing.

Ghosh urged Thakur to go through the official data sent to him, and challenged him to visit the constituency in person to meet the voters and verify his claims.

With PTI inputs