Residents of several storm-hit villages in Jalpaiguri were busy looking for their elector’s photo identity card (EPIC) from the ruins of their damaged dwelling units throughout the day on Monday as they could not take their important documents with them during the disaster on Sunday afternoon.

Residents of Kalibari, Ghatpara, Basuniyapara, Sardarpara and Fultali in Barnish gram panchayat near Maynaguri were not sure whether they would be able to cast their votes in the forthcoming Lok Sabha polls.

Nearly 1,000 voters of these villages, which are in the Jalpaiguri Lok Sabha constituency, will exercise their franchise at the booths set up in Fultali School. The election for the Jalpaiguri Lok Sabha constituency will be held on April 19.

Sources in the district election officer’s office said if residents of the storm-hit villages could not find their EPIC, an alternative arrangement could be made for them.

Shama Parveen, the district magistrate, said alternative identity cards like Aadhaar, driving licence, PAN card, MNREGA job card and passport could also be used to cast votes.

“Those who have lost EPIC to the storm will be provided with a voter information slip,” said the district magistrate.

However, the villagers didn’t get any of the documents specified by the Election Commission of India to establish their identities in the polling booths.

One such villager, Gopal Roy, has spent the night under a makeshift structure after his house was severely damaged in the storm. He didn’t get the voter identity card and other documents like Aadhaar as he could not find the file in which he had kept all these important papers.

“I don’t know where the file has gone… The storm has perhaps blown it away,” said Roy.

Another villager, Nirubala Roy, is also facing the same problem. She lost her EPIC and the documents of her house. She was in the dark about how she could get the duplicates of the documents.

The Chief Electoral Officer of Bengal, Aariz Aftab, convened a teleconference with the District Election Officers or the district magistrates of Cooch Behar, Alipurduar and Jalpaiguri to discuss the ground realities in the storm-hit areas. Aftab instructed them to submit a comprehensive report detailing the extent of the damage caused by the storm to the commission by Tuesday morning.

Expressing concern over the loss of EPICs, the commission directed the DEOs to conduct a thorough survey and provide a report to the CEO’s office.

“Although no complaints have been received so far, we have urged the DEOs to
mobilise all booth-level officers to gather preliminary information from the affected people to find out how many people lost their EPICs,” a senior official in the CEO’s office stated.

Addressing concerns about voting procedures because of the missing EPICs, the official assured that the names of the voters would be verified from the voters’ list, and a special document would be issued to facilitate voting. With the first phase of elections drawing near, the district administration has been urged to expedite the effort accordingly.