EC serves SIR notice to Amartya Sen for Jan 16 hearing, TMC calls it 'shameful farce'

The Election Commission on Wednesday served a notice to Nobel laureate Amartya Sen in connection with the ongoing SIR of electoral rolls in West Bengal, seeking a hearing of the 92-year-old economist on January 16 at his residence, an official said.

The Trinamool Congress responded sharply to the development and called it a “shameful farce”.

With Sen currently stationed abroad, the notice was served to a member of his family in Santiniketan, Bolpur, where the ancestral residence of the economist is located, officials said.

Clearing the air on whether multiple hearing notices have been served to Sen, a senior official at the office of West Bengal Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) said, “There is only one notice served to Prof Sen. There were some logical discrepancies found in the enumeration form submitted by him, and for this reason, he has been asked to appear for a hearing. Since he is above 85 years, the BLO concerned will be visiting him at his residence for the hearing as per the EC rules.”

Sen's cousin acknowledged the receipt of the notice and said he would inform the academic about the development.

The notice, the official said, was generated during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) process on grounds of “logical discrepancy” after the age difference between Sen and his mother, as recorded in the enumeration form, was found to be less than 15 years.

The development has already created a political dust-up after Trinamool Congress leader Abhishek Banerjee alleged on Tuesday that serving SIR notices to eminent personalities like Sen was tantamount to “insulting the people of Bengal”, a claim that both the BJP and the Election Commission rejected.

The TMC, however, continued to hit out at the EC and the BJP for what it called “their Bangla-Birodhi (anti-Bengal) agenda of division and degradation”.

“A Nobel laureate should be above any suspicion, right? But what if he's a Bengali? Then he'll be slapped with hearing notices as if he were some common criminal,” the party posted on X following the handing over of the notice to Sen.

“Amartya Sen, whose groundbreaking works form the bedrock of modern economics, who has brought unparalleled glory to Bengal and the entire nation, and whose ideas are studied in universities across the world, has been issued a SIR hearing notice,” the party said.

The TMC alleged that the SIR is a “cynical, shameful farce” of an exercise conducted at the “behest of the BJP and the EC”.

“They will drag our icons through the mud, tarnish our pride, and stoop to any low if it serves their Bangla-Birodhi (anti-Bengal) agenda of division and degradation,” the party wrote on its social media handle.

Earlier, the poll body clarified that minor technical discrepancies, including spelling errors in voters' names, can be corrected administratively by BLOs and do not affect a voter's eligibility or rights.