West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee
Credit: PTI Photo
Kolkata: Even as the two parliamentarians of the Trinamool Congress (TMC) moved the Supreme Court against the Special Intensive Review (SIR) of the electoral rolls, the party supremo and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Monday called the exercise “votebandi” and demanded that the Election Commission must stop it immediately.
Mamata also sought to turn the tables on the Opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which kept on accusing her party and her government in West Bengal of facilitating illegal migration from Bangladesh.
She said that if the Border Security Force under the Union Ministry of Home Affairs was responsible for guarding the India-Bangladesh border, Amit Shah – the Home Minister of the BJP-led central government – should be held accountable for infiltration and he should resign.
Dola Sen and Mala Roy, the TMC’s members in the Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha, moved the Supreme Court, challenging the SIR of the electoral rolls in West Bengal.
Mamata on Monday drew a parallel between the November 2016 demonetisation of banknotes and the SIR of the electoral roll and called the process launched by the EC “votebandi”.
“I do not understand the hurry in conducting SIR just before elections. This is tantamount to insulting the people of Bengal. I firmly stand by my earlier stance that the EC must immediately stop this exercise,” the Chief Minister alleged during a tour to North Bengal.
“The SIR cannot be completed in two or three months,” she said, adding, “It is being carried out forcibly. I have heard of houses with eight voters where only two forms were distributed and the other six missing.”
West Bengal, where assembly elections is likely to take place in April-May next year, is one of the 12 States and Union Territories, where the EC had launched the SIR of the electoral rolls recently – after completing the process ahead of the elections in Bihar.
The EC deployed 80,681 Booth Level Officers to conduct the SIR of the electoral rolls in the 294 assembly constituencies in West Bengal.
“(Now) You must prove yourself; you must know who you are. What greater humiliation could there be? They could have done this (SIR) over two years. What right does the EC have in determining who is a citizen and who isn’t?” wondered Mamata.
“You could do this (SIR) in Bihar because you could get away with it, but not in Bengal, where we will question you at every step. You only want to satisfy your boss, not the public. You cannot demolish democracy,” said the TMC supremo, sending out a message to Gyanesh Kumar, the Chief Election Commissioner, albeit without directly referring to them.
“It is not easy to play with us. We assess the pitch before playing. We will catch them at every step and ensure every genuine voter can vote.”