CM Mamata Banerjee leads TMC's protest march in Kolkata as SIR starts in West Bengal

Kolkata: As the Special Intensive Review (SIR) of the electoral rolls started in West Bengal on Tuesday, chief Minister and Trinamool Congress supremo, Mamata Banerjee, said that the fall of the government led by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the Centre would be inevitable if a single genuine voter of the state was disenfranchised.

The Election Commission deployed 80,681 Booth Level Officers to conduct the SIR of the electoral rolls in the 294 assembly constituencies in West Bengal.

Mamata and her heir apparent Abhishek Banerjee led the TMC’s rally in Kolkata, protesting the SIR of the electoral rolls, which the ruling party in the state denounced as “silent invisible rigging”.

With at least five people dying by suicide in West Bengal, allegedly due to fear of losing voting rights, since the announcement of the SIR of the electoral rolls in the state, the chief minister accused the EC of colluding with the BJP to strike out the names of large numbers of voters only in the states ruled by the parties opposed to the National Democratic Alliance. She said that people of the state were dying due to the fear triggered by the SIR.

The BLOs distributed enumeration forms in duplicate to over 18 lakh voters across West Bengal on the first day of house-to-house visits for the SIR of the electoral rolls, according to the officials overseeing the process. The process will continue till December 4.

“The BJP is conducting the SIR in Kerala, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal, but not in Assam, Tripura or other north-eastern states. What is the reason for this bias? This is clearly discrimination aimed at helping the ruling party at the Centre,” she said at the end of the rally.

“If even one genuine voter's name is struck off the rolls, the BJP government will be shaken to its core. The fall of this government will be inevitable.”

With the assembly elections in West Bengal just a few months away, the BJP, the principal challenger to the TMC, is hoping for the deletion of the names of large numbers of allegedly illegal migrants from Bangladesh and Myanmar from the electoral rolls of the state through the SIR. The TMC supremo, however, dismissed the BJP’s plan.

“These people think they will remove two crore names and deport people to Bangladesh, or move them to detention camps and throw them out of the country, only to capture power (in West Bengal),” said Mamata, adding, “Now if you think you will win 294 seats by cutting 2-3% vote-share, then you are living in a fool's paradise. Your voters will now vote for us because they care about their existence.”

She addressed the rally after leading a protest march from Dharmatala to Jorasanko, the ancestral home of Rabindranath Tagore, with Abhishek, her nephew and the TMC general secretary, by her side.

“They say they will expel Bangladeshis and Rohingyas. How many Rohingyas did they find in Bihar after SIR? Just speaking Bengali doesn't make someone a Bangladeshi. Bengal's identity cannot be insulted like this,” said the chief minister and the TMC supremo.

Abhishek quoted Union Home Minister Amit Shah recently saying that the people who had not been born in the country did not have any right to vote.

“I want to ask Amit Shah: if you have the guts, come and say you meant that L K Advani cannot vote because he was born in Karachi,” said the youth icon of the TMC, adding, “Earlier, people exercised their right to vote to elect the government. Now Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government chooses who will get to exercise that right.”