Anita Das, now 47, was lured from her home in West Bengal’s Nadia district in her 20s with the promise of a job. Like many other women, she was trafficked to the red light area of north Kolkata’s Sonagachi in the same clothes that she left home in, no identification documents or money in hand.
“I left home over 15 years back and never returned. I work here, I have birthed and raised children here. Suddenly, I am being asked about my parents, where they were and where I was in 2002. I am being asked for identification documents by a society that did not consider me worthy of recognition or respect,” Ms. Das said, referring to the ongoing special intensive revision (SIR) of West Bengal’s electoral rolls.
Ms. Das described SIR as a “crisis equivalent to the COVID pandemic”.
“We are not against SIR. But most of us are uneducated and don’t know what to write in the form, how to fill it, or how to trace ourselves or our parents from the 2002 list. The Booth Level Officer (BLO) is filling it on our behalf but we don’t know what he is writing. Some of us do not even know where we were born, let alone have birth certificates or other such documents. We have been disowned by our families,” she said.
