Kolkata: Nearly 55 nuns from the Missionaries of Charity (MC), the religious order founded by Saint Teresa of Calcutta and headquartered in Kolkata, have been added to the supplementary electoral list published on Tuesday after a tribunal cleared their cases.
Background of the Issue
The MC had previously written to the Election Commission (EC) after many nuns' names were deleted from voter rolls. The nuns moved the tribunal against these deletions. An MC sister from Mother House told TOI, 'Nearly 55 names of sisters across the city have been cleared by the tribunal and included in the electoral rolls. They will cast their vote on Thursday morning. We had help from Rajya Sabha MP Derek O'Brien on this matter, and we are thankful to him. We are also grateful to the EC that they have looked into our issue and the tribunal cleared the names.'
Details of Deletions and Hearings
TOI had earlier reported that at least 35 nuns, who gave the Mother House of the Missionaries of Charity or Nirmala Shishu Bhavan as their permanent address, were deleted from the rolls after judicial scrutiny. All of them were voters of the Chowringhee assembly constituency. Several other MC nuns had their names cleared and included in the February 28 final list.
A local source shared that more than 120 sisters, voters of Chowringhee, were called for a hearing in the first lot as per EC guidelines because they were not mapped to the last SIR of any state or union territory, including Bengal's 2002 SIR rolls, or could not show any linkages. An EC source explained, 'During the hearing, the nuns tried to provide as many documents as possible, including passport, PAN card, Aadhaar card, certificate from church, and others. But many could not provide documents of their parents or birth certificates, making it difficult to prove linkages. Since their names also change upon embracing sisterhood, previous documents may not match with their current names.'
Challenges in Documentation
A source shared that there were a few sisters who wrote their father's names in the SIR enumeration form, while many sisters had named Saint Teresa as their mother or parent, or Sister Nirmala as parent in the enumeration form. 'When the February 28 list was published, names of several sisters were included while a few were deleted. Many of them were kept under judicial scrutiny and were later deleted without citing any reasons,' said the source.
