India / Bengal man issued voter ID card with dog's photo, says 'will drag EC to court'

Berhampore: A West Bengal resident was shocked to see a dog’s photo instead of his own on his voter ID card and has decided to file a defamation suit against the Election Commission of India (ECI).

North Bengal resident Sunil Karmakar received his ‘corrected’ voter ID card on Tuesday. But instead of his own visage, he found himself staring at that of a hairy pooch.

“There were some errors in my voter ID card so I had applied for a correction. When the corrected card came, the information was correct, but my photo had been replaced,” the irate 64-year-old voter of Bewa II’s Ramnagar village in Bengal’s Murshidabad said.

Karmakar feels the error was intentional and intended to humiliate him in public. “People who saw my card, mocked it publicly. I will drag the Election Commission of India (ECI) to court,” he said.

A government official involved in correcting voter ID card errors said that the mistake had, indeed, been spotted earlier, but that he had no idea how it remained uncorrected.

“We noticed the dog’s picture after the publication of the draft voters’ list. I rushed to Karmakar’s residence and brought back a picture of the man. But I am clueless as to how the card got printed with the dog’s photo anyway,” he said.

The mistake may have occurred due to the large-scale panic across Bengal over a possible citizenship screening exercise. Over the past few months, more than 0.83 million peoole including 0.24 million new voters from 22 Assembly segments in Murshidabad district, scrambled to apply for fresh voter IDs and rectifications of errors in existing ones. The district administration had cancelled leave for all government employees to ensure an error free voters’ list.

Rajarshi Chakraborty, the block development officer of Farakka, said that the administration will investigate Karmakar’s charge that the error was intentional.

“He will be given a new voter ID card in April. Meanwhile, government employees involved in the process are being asked to show cause,” Chakraborty said.