Kolkata: Trinamool Congress general secretary and the party’s Lok Sabha member, Abhishek Banerjee, has convened a crucial virtual meeting on August 8 to finalise the party’s blueprint on two crucial issues.
The first issue is on how to organise mass movements against the proposed Special Intensive Review (SIR) of voters’ list in West Bengal by the Election Commission of India (ECI).
SIR has already been described by the Trinamool Congress leadership as the BJP’s ploy to delete names of genuine voters in West Bengal from the list and thus slap the NRC in the state indirectly.
The second issue, party insiders said, is to work out a strategy on how to spread the party’s scheduled movement on the issue of harassment of Bengali-speaking migrants in BJP-ruled states beyond the borders of West Bengal to other Indian states.
“The meeting will start from 4 P.M. on Wednesday and will be attended by all elected party MPs, legislators, heads of municipal corporations, municipalities and panchayat bodies, all members of the party’s state committee, chiefs of the party-affiliated mass organisations and all the district presidents and chairmen of the party,” confirmed a member of the West Bengal Cabinet.
Notes have already been issued to those who are supposed to be present at the virtual meeting, the Cabinet member added.
It is learnt that while SIR and Bengali-speaking migrant harassment would be the two main issues to be discussed in the August 8 meeting, there are possibilities of discussion on some internal organisational matters surfacing in the course of the meeting.
On Wednesday, Abhishek Banerjee accused the Centre’s ruling BJP of using the ECI to snatch away voting rights of a large number of people, and he also dubbed the poll-panel-initiated SIR as “Silent Invisible Rigging”.
He also claimed that the BJP got scared of the people’s mandate and that is why they resorted to such tactics to turn elections in their favour.
The statement from Banerjee came amid concerns that the Election Commission is planning to conduct a SIR of the voters’ list of West Bengal ahead of the 2026 Assembly polls.
The ECI recently concluded a SIR of the voters’ list in neighbouring Bihar, where more than 60 lakh people were described as doubtful voters.
(IANS)
