They are the nowhere people, but can they remain the somewhere voters? Clutching forms, some anxiously drawing a dupatta or shawl over their faces, the sex workers of Sonagachi in north Kolkata queued up at three special camps decorated with flowers Tuesday, hoping they won’t fall off the voter list in the ongoing Special Intensive Revision drive in West Bengal.
A voter card is a precious identity document for the women, whose address — one of India’s largest red-light districts — counts for little when it comes to official records.
18 years ago, they were enrolled as voters for the first time, on the basis of accounts they held in a local cooperative bank and its passbooks. The SIR doesn’t recognise these documents, and so the fear of being disenfranchised and what that may mean is palpable at the camps.
Already, the women say, many — especially in brothels called ‘Nepali Baari’ and ‘Bangladeshi Baari’ — have left, afraid of being singled out, “deported”.
On Tuesday, Chief Electoral Officer Manoj Agarwal, who has been firefighting allegations against the SIR by the ruling TMC, visited the special camps, officially designated as meant for “marginalized electors”. Shashi Panja, West Bengal’s Minister of Women and Child Development, and Social Welfare, also dropped in to take stock.
A 35-year-old, standing in a queue at one of the camps, pointed out that the option of establishing family links to previous voter lists — one of the ways to clear the SIR — was closed to them. “I was trafficked here when I was 16. My family disowned me when I tried to return… They will not help me.”
Parent to a girl, who lives in a boarding house run by an NGO, the 35-year-old is scared of losing her voting rights. “But the officials have assured me they will do something,” she said.
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Another sex worker, who is 30, claimed her voter card got cancelled a few years ago and she has been trying to get it remade. “I voted in 2016. But in 2021, I was told my card had somehow got cancelled… When I heard that a camp had opened, I rushed here.”
A resident of ‘Building No. 3, Sonagachi Lane’, who is awaiting her turn, said: “Many girls in my building who had no voter cards left out of fear when SIR started.”
A 25-year-old, standing in a queue at the camp set up at Kadamtala Club, was worried about the space for address in the form. “We stay on rent in small rooms with only a verbal contract with the landlord. We move frequently. There is no address record… Will my voter card be cancelled?”
She said that this apprehension was the reason she did not collect the enumeration form earlier. “But now I am here to clarify things. I have an Aadhaar card, a PAN Card and a bank account like most girls here.”
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A 50-year-old who no longer works in the sex trade and resides in ‘House No. 9’ recalled being part of rallies in Kolkata to get voter cards for the women of Sonagachi. “Now they are saying all these will be cancelled. I have come to check if that is the case.”
Questions tumbling out, she said: “I do not have documents of my parents. I was brought here at a young age and have had no contact with my family since. My parents are dead and my brothers do not like me. But my son has a voter card. Will that be cancelled?”
CEO Agarwal said they are trying their best to include everyone. “There are about 11,400 voters across 14 booths in Sonagachi. About 70% enumeration forms have been submitted back. Around 3,600 have said they did not receive the forms. This is why we are here, to reach out to them.”
Agarwal admitted there are problems, but said they are trying to solve them. “Many applicants do not have proper documents, many have difficulties matching records to families… We have special powers which can be exercised. These camps are to ensure that new voters can apply easily.”
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Speaking to reporters after her visit, minister Panja said: “The women here do not have 2002 SIR documents but other documents like Aadhaar cards and bank accounts. There was a need for such special camps, also considering the privacy of the women here.”
Vijay Bharti, District Electoral Officer, Kolkata North, who attended the camps Tuesday, said they would also reach out to other “marginalised groups”, such as orphans and the elderly in old age homes.
Mahasweta Mukherjee, an advocacy officer at a ‘Community Based Organisation’ of sex workers, raised the concerns of sex workers with the EC, leading to the setting up of the special camps. “At least 10% of the girls have fled the area post-SIR,” she told The Indian Express.
The first time the sex workers got the voter cards, in 2007, was courtesy the Usha Multipurpose Cooperative Society Limited set up by them in 1995. It started out distributing condoms and sanitary napkins in red-light areas and offering loans at easy interests. Later, the passbooks handed out by the society helped the sex workers apply to become voters.
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Talking about “our struggle for voting rights”, Bharati Dey, the mentor of Usha Multipurpose Cooperative Society Limited, said: “We took out rallies and protest dharnas. Finally, the Election Commission agreed to include sex workers in the electoral list based on the details of their cooperative bank accounts.”
Santanu Chatterjee, the manager and chief executive of Usha, said: “The day EC officials visited Sonagachi and the cooperative bank to check details, 270 sex workers got voter cards… Slowly thousands of women not only in Sonagachi but in other red-light areas of the state got voter identity cards. Then came Aadhaar and PAN Cards.”
