Kolkata, Jan 1 (IANS) The Election Commission of India (ECI), on Thursday evening, had announced special relaxations for four categories of voters as regards to identity proof-related formalities to be followed at the ongoing hearing sessions on the claims and objections on the draft voters’ list in West Bengal, which is the second stage of the three-stage Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in the state.

These four categories are people from the tribal community, sex workers, people from the transgender or other community, and declared monks.

Explaining the sort of relaxations during the hearing sessions that will be extended to these four categories of voters, an insider from the office of the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO), West Bengal said that the Commission had decided not to be that stringent about the authenticity of the supporting identity documents required for establishing their voting rights as will be done in case of regular categories of voters.

As regards sex workers and people from the transgender communities, the relaxations are being done since a majority of that section are social outcasts and family outcasts, and they do not own their original documents to prove their authenticity as genuine voters as Indian citizens.

In the case of the people from the transgender community, pointed out by the CEO’s office insider, there is an additional problem of three major mismatches between their original documents and their present documents, namely name mismatch, look mismatch, and, most importantly, gender mismatch.

“However, the Commission had made it clear that other than these four categories of voters, no other category of voters will be extended this special relaxation as regards to authenticity of the documents,” confirmed the CEO’s office insider.

In case of monks, there is the problem of name mismatch in case of their pre-monk life and post-monk life, and hence they would also be extended this special relaxation as regards the identity proof documents.

–IANS

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