Mamata Begins Sit-in Against Voter Roll Deletions
Banerjee accused the BJP and the Election Commission of conspiring to "disenfranchise Bengali voters" and vowed to expose them
Kolkata: Launching a Dharna against the deletion of 63.66 lakh names and ‘adjudication' of another 60.06 lakhs over logical discrepancies from the voters' list in the ongoing special intensive revision (SIR) in West Bengal, chief minister Mamata Banerjee announced on Friday that 22 voters, who were recently declared dead by the Election Commission, would parade alive at her agitation venue at Metro Channel in Esplanade.
The Trinamul Congress supremo also condemned the EC and BJP for delisting the names on the eve of the Assembly polls. Referring to a group of people present at the venue, she said, “They have been declared dead in the SIR. But they are sitting here. Look at them. They are showing they are alive and doing well. I wish them a good life ahead. We collect information by every inch. BJP is shameless and arrogant and the EC is its agent.”
Ms Banerjee added, “A lot of people will come here. There are 22 people who were declared dead. They are alive however. I will present them on the dais. Family members of eight people, who died here during the SIR and visited New Delhi, will join us also.” She however did not state the duration of her protest. Her MP nephew Abhishek Banerjee, several state ministers, TMC leaders including parliamentarians and MLAs attended the first day of the stir.
Mr Banerjee took a swipe at the BJP for trying hard to win the polls with the help of the EC. Among others were TMC Rajya Sabha candidate Maneka Guruswamy, former Jadavpur MP Kabir Suman and poet Joy Goswami. An aged monk, who identified himself as the president of Ramkrishna Sarada Mission at Minakhan in North 24 Parganas, met Ms Banerjee on the dais and told the crowd that his name has also been dropped in the SIR though he was enlisted as a voter in 2002.
The agitation however witnessed a counter protest by a group of para teachers who showed the CM placards for their salary hike. Ms Banerjee told them, “This is not a place to hold another demonstration. Please don't play politics over anything here on behalf of BJP. Show it to the Prime Minister, union home minister.” The police later removed the demonstrators.
The start of Ms Banerjee's protest coincided with a startling revelation by Chief Electoral Officer West Bengal Manoj Agarwal who informed that only around seven lakh voters’ names out of 60.06 lakhs ‘under adjudication' for logical discrepancies have been sorted in the last one week. Meanwhile, TMC made a three-member team of Rajya Sabha MP Samirul Islam, Krishnanagar MP Mohua Maitra and state minister Chandrima Bhattacharya who will meet the full bench of the EC led by Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar during their visit to the state on March 8-9.