SIR brings Didi back to dharna dais: ‘Will expose ‘BJP-EC plot’

Kolkata: CM Mamata Banerjee on Friday hit the streets again to protest what she called a "BJP-Election Commission conspiracy to disenfranchise Bengal's voters" through Special Intensive Revision of the electoral roll and said the upcoming assembly polls would be a farce if genuine voters are not allowed to vote.

The EC full bench is set to arrive in Kolkata on Sunday night and stay in the state till Tuesday to review poll preparedness. The election dates are likely to be announced anytime after the bench returns to Delhi.


"I will expose the BJP-EC conspiracy to disenfranchise Bengali voters," the CM said from her dharna stage in Metro channel. She said she would stay at the protest site overnight and declared that "the dharna will go on".

"Many people declared dead (on the electoral roll) are still alive. I will bring them to the stage," Banerjee said. "Look at them. They are sitting here, but have been declared dead on the voters' list. BJP and its agents in EC have crossed all limits." The CM said she would speak in detail on the issue on Saturday.

In an interview with TV channel News18 Bangla, which was aired on Friday, the CM accused BJP of plotting to remove the names of over 1 crore people from Bengal's voters' list through the SIR to win the assembly elections. She accused Union home minister Amit Shah of threatening two senior EC officials to implement BJP's agenda.

She alleged that chief election commissioner Gyanesh Kumar used "logical discrepancy" in SIR forms as a tool to remove from the electoral roll the names of many women, members of SC-ST communities, Muslims, Biharis and others who have been voting in Bengal for decades.

Addressing the gathering at the dharna site, Trinamool national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee gave a "boycott BJP" call. "If 60 lakh people can be kept under adjudication, why cannot the PM's chair be kept under adjudication? The PM was elected with the votes of these people," Abhishek said.

"In 2021, some civil society organisations had given the call ‘No vote to BJP'. Today, we say to 10 crore people of Bengal that BJP must be boycotted. Boycott them, socially and politically," Abhishek Banerjee said.

The Trinamool national general secretary shot off a letter to CEC Kumar and Bengal chief electoral officer Manoj Agarwal, demanding that supplementary voters' lists be released daily based on scrutiny of "under adjudication" cases by judicial officers. He also demanded that voters on supplementary lists be told that their names would be included in the final list.

Both CM Banerjee and Abhishek mocked BJP's rath yatra programme. Bengal BJP is criss-crossing the state with its Paribartan Yatra. During his speech, Abhishek said he had never heard of a rath yatra in the Bengali month of Phalgun.The CM added immediately, "It's a five-star hotel. It has a kitchen, bedroom, and bathroom."

"As many as 58 lakh names had been removed when the draft list was published (in Dec). Over 60 lakh voters have been put ‘under adjudication'. That means more than 1.2 crore people are affected. BJP leaders had been saying this months before the process started. This cannot be a coincidence," Abhishek said.

When the curtain lifted on the dharna site around 2pm, Banerjee was sitting on the stage surrounded by Abhishek, Mahua Moitra, Shashi Panja, Chandrima Bhattacharya, Subrata Bakshi, Mala Roy, Saugata Roy, Sujit Bose, Arup Biswas and Firhad Hakim, among others.

There was a brief disturbance when a group of para-teachers held a protest.

Singer Kabir Suman and poet Joy Goswami recounted the CM's fight during the Nandigram movement.