Congress claims Bangladeshi names included in Tripura electoral roll

Agartala, Jan 19: The Tripura Pradesh Congress Committee has expressed concern over the authenticity of the Photo Electoral Rolls (PER) in the State and alleged that the names of 11 people, who were permanent residents of Bangladesh, were included in the lists.

The party's youth wing submitted a memorandum to the state Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) on the issue and alleged that Bangladeshi nationals had managed to enlist their names in the electoral rolls.

''One Pradeep Das, who is a permanent resident of the neighbouring country and lecturer in a college in Cummilla district of Bangladesh, has been enrolled as a voter of Pratapgarh Assembly constituency,'' the memorandum pointed out.

The party urged for immediate intervention of the authorities in the matter and underlined, ''Some projects are still being announced and beneficiaries are being identified with retrospective effect even after the CEC's instructions to the Chief Secretary not to announce any new project or identify beneficiaries from the State government,'' Congress spokesperson Ratan Chakraborty said.

Meanwhile, the CEO said, ''We have also received complaints with regard to faulty electoral rolls from some political parties and alleged presence of duplicate voters and mismatched photo-identity cards. Besides there were also allegations of deletion of genuine voters from the rolls, which we are looking into.''

UNI