Team India cricketer Mohammad Shami appeared for the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) hearing on Tuesday at a school, which was the hearing centre at Bikramgarh in Kolkata.
Shami hails from Uttar Pradesh but has been residing in Kolkata for his cricketing career and was called for a hearing as the progeny linkage column in the enumeration form was left blank as per the West Bengal Election Commission(EC). Shami’s name features in the voter list under the Rash Bihari Assembly constituency.
“It is your responsibility, if you are called, you must come(for the hearing). If I were called for hearing, I do not mind. They(hearing officers) handled it very well,” said Mohammad Shami.
Meanwhile protests have been taking place across the state over the last few days over SIR on various issues, including at hearing centres on the miscommunication over acknowledgement slips and other discrepancies.
On Tuesday, protests resulted in ransacking certain hearing centres in Murshidabad, North Dinajpur, North 24 Parganas and South 24 Parganas districts of the state. The situation was brought under control after police intervened, after which the hearing resumed at these centres.
Trinamool Congress (TMC) MP Abhishek Banerjee is expected to meet West Bengal Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Manoj Agarwal on January 27, along with 10 party leaders, to discuss the discrepancies and harassment of people in the SIR hearing.
Siddiqullah Chowdhury, Minister of Mass Education Extension and Library Services of West Bengal, will hold a rally on the same day over the issue. “We will hold a rally for 90-95 lakh people who have received notices and we don’t want one voter to be eliminated. But we have to explain to people to go for a hearing. No one is against SIR. Everyone would want their name to be included,” said the minister.
Protests also took place over the submission of Form 7 for SIR, resulting in scuffles in various districts over the last week. Form 7, which is meant for objection and deletion of names in the SIR list, promoted clashes in Murshidabad district when BJP supporters attempted to submit a large number of these forms. Supporters of TMC allegedly assaulted BJP supporters and set the forms on fire, alleging that the saffron party was forcefully deleting names from the SIR list.