Bengal SIR: The Election Commission of India (ECI) provided an explanation for why domicile certificates given by the West Bengal government are not acceptable as identification documents, stating that documents supplied for particular reasons cannot be used to prove voting rights.

Given the often transferable nature of jobs across the nation, sources in the office of the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO), West Bengal, stated that one of the functions of the domicile certificates is to provide an extra proof of residency in a state for those residents who are serving in the state’s armed forces or central forces.

The West Bengal government would also provide a domicile certificate to a current citizen of any other state whose parents have lived in West Bengal for at least 15 years.

But in this situation, the state government only issues a certificate after meeting certain requirements. The first factor is whether or not the parents in question own any real estate in West Bengal, such as a home or piece of land. Whether or not the applicant for the domicile certificate was born in West Bengal is the second criteria.

The applicant’s present residency in the other state is also thoroughly verified by the state police at the same time.The applicant in question is only given the domicile certificate after meeting all of these requirements. Therefore, the sources in the CEO’s office highlighted that the domicile certificate’s acceptance as an identification document necessary for establishing voting rights in the SIR exercise is beyond the scope of its function.

The recognition of domicile certificates as identification verification in the SIR operation has already given rise to a political slugfest in West Bengal.

Notably, Mamata Banerjee, the chief minister and head of the Trinamool Congress, accused the Commission of purposefully rejecting domicile certificates as identification documents in order to remove legitimate names from the voter list.

The Mamata government’s domicile certificates were issued “rampantly and illegally” to accommodate illegal Bangladeshi and Rohingya infiltrators in the voter list, according to the state’s opposition party, which argued that they should not be accepted as identity proof in the revision exercise.