Kolkata: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday accused the Election Commission of India (ECI) of selectively deleting voters from the Assembly constituencies with Trinamool Congress legislators in the state through the ongoing special intensive revision (SIR).
“In Assembly constituencies with Bharatiya Janata Party legislators, names of a maximum of 3,000 to 4,000 voters are deleted. Whereas, in the Assembly constituencies with Trinamool Congress legislators, the number of voters deleted ranges between 40,000 and 1,00,000. In my own constituency of Bhabanipur in South Kolkata names of 40,000 voters have already been deleted in the draft voters’ list. Their final target is to delete 1,00,000 names from Bhabanipur,” the Chief Minister told media persons in New Delhi on Thursday afternoon.
Speaking on the occasion, the Chief Minister again targeted ECI’s Director General (Information Technology), Seema Khanna, and accused her of playing the lead role in deleting the names of genuine voters in West Bengal.
“Who is Seema Khanna? She is an agent of the BJP attached to the ECI,” the Chief Minister said.
She also claimed that the ECI had unilaterally deleted 58 lakh names in the draft voters’ list without consulting the electoral registration officers (EROs). “Now the ECI is indiscriminately issuing notice for hearing in the name of ‘logical discrepancy’. Even Nobel laureate economist Amartya Sen was summoned for a hearing,” the Chief Minister said.
She also claimed that the BJP is indirectly playing this dirty game from behind, using the ECI as a pawn, since the ruling party at the Centre knows that they would not be able to counter Trinamool Congress democratically and politically.
Speaking on the occasion, the Chief Minister also claimed that through central investigating agencies like the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and Enforcement Directorate (ED), the BJP was not just harassing the opposition leader but also businessmen and common people. “I am not blaming the central agencies. But what I oppose is the misuse of the central agencies,” she added.
Mamata Banerjee also questioned why FIRs should not be registered against ECI for being the reason for so many deaths because of the unplanned manner in which the revision exercise is being conducted.
Commenting on her meeting with the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar on Tuesday, the Chief Minister accused Kumar of misbehaving with the members of the delegation led by her.
Also present at the press conference was Trinamool Congress general secretary and the party’s Lok Sabha member Abhishek Banerjee.
“The arrogance on the part of the CEC is evident from the fact that six letters from Mamata Banerjee, an elected Chief Minister, to the CEE neither evoked any response nor even any acknowledgement,” he said.
