Congress Candidate Motab Shaikh Wins Surprise Victory in West Bengal Assembly Election

Till a month ago, all Motab Shaikh hoped for was to make it to the West Bengal electoral roll. Now, the 58-year-old is one of only two candidates of the Congress to have won in the state, keeping alive hopes of the party, after it had scored a duck in 2021. His name deleted as a voter after adjudication, following the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise, Shaikh had approached the Supreme Court to urge the tribunals to hear his case on priority. On April 5, a day to go for the end of deadline to file nominations for the first-phase seats, the apex court ruled in Shaikh’s favour. On April 6, Shaikh filed his papers from the Farakka Assembly seat. On Monday, he got 63,050 votes to win the constituency by a margin of more than 8,000. It was his first Assembly election; with the last polls that the contraction by profession fought being for panchayats. His son now handles the family business. The Trinamool Congress, which held the Farakka seat, was relegated to the third position, with the BJP finishing second. Incredulous at the reversal in his fortunes, Shaikh told The Indian Express over the phone: “I am one of the luckiest people in the world. I had lost all hope when I found my name deleted from the electoral list following the SIR. I thought I would never even be able to vote… But the people voted for me… It is a victory of the people.” Of the roughly 27.1 lakh deletions after adjudication in Bengal, 38,222 were in Farakka. The Murshidabad district, where Farakka falls, saw the highest number of deletions in the state, at over 11 lakh. The other Assembly seat won by the Congress in Bengal, Raninagar, also falls in Murshidabad district. Julfikar Ali won from here by a margin of 2,701 votes, winning 79,423 votes, against sitting MLA Abdul Soumik Hossain of the TMC. Shaikh points out that he only got 14 days to campaign because of the long uncertainty over whether he would be included as a voter and be allowed to contest. “First the Congress took time to nominate me, and then I found that my name was deleted from the electoral roll. I could campaign only in half of my Assembly constituency,” Shaikh says. Had he got more time, he adds, “my margin would have been more”. The Congress, which had won Farakka in 2016, says Shaikh’s victory was proof of “the lack of a level-playing field” due to the EC. “Creating a foolproof electoral roll is the duty of the poll panel. Here, the EC was forced to allow Motab to file his nomination after a Supreme Court order… His victory shows people’s faith in the party,” says Congress spokesperson Soumya Aich Roy. Shaikh, who says he has always been with the Congress, like his father and grandfather before him, says: “The Farakka seat used to be a Congress stronghold like the rest of Murshidabad. Then the TMC came. But this time people have rejected the TMC.” Shaikh says the anger against the ruling party had been growing due to its MLAs not working for the people. “People have also rejected them for their corruption. I am with the people and that is why they blessed me.” On whether he expects problems with a BJP government at the helm in the state, and the Congress having only two MLAs in the Assembly, Shaikh says: “I do not believe in unnecessary confrontation. Though the BJP has come to power, I will get work done for my constituency with the new government’s cooperation.” Among the issues top of the agenda for Shaikh, a resident of Doipur village, is drinking water shortage, and the SIR, which has left “the future of 27 lakh people uncertain”. “I will raise the plight of lakhs of people in the Assembly.” In his appeal to the Supreme Court, Shaikh said he was deleted as a voter due to a mismatch in his name’s spelling between the 2002 electoral roll (a benchmark for the EC) and his present documents. He was called for a hearing on January 29, his name was sent for adjudication, and later, deleted. Shaikh, who has a passport and other documents, says he had submitted the same during the hearing. “But still my name was deleted. Then, after my party nominated me, I approached the Supreme Court.” After the Court asked that his case be considered on priority, the tribunal hearing it ruled in Shaikh’s favour, saying that Aadhaar card was “one of the documents enumerated for the purpose of establishing the identity of a person”. Accordingly, the tribunal said, “a direction was issued to the Election Commission of India and its authorities to accept Aadhaar Card as a proof of identity for the purpose of inclusion or exclusion in the revised voter list”. Apart from Aadhaar, which was “sufficient” to accept Shaikh’s appeal, the tribunal cited the fact that he had a passport issued in November 2018 and a driving licence from 2001 with his name spelled as Motab Shaikh in both. Roy says Shaikh’s case showed that “many genuine electors may have failed to cast their votes because of their names being deleted”. “This is unfortunate for a democracy.” Only one of a handful of people to have escaped that fate due to last-minute relief from the Supreme Court – including another Congress candidate, Alam Mottakin, who lost from Ratua – Shaikh says: “I wish that all the people whose names have been deleted in Farakka and at other places, who are genuine, find their place again in the electoral list.”