West Bengal: Didi begins sit-in, alleges EC 'plot' to delete voters' names

KOLKATA: Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee began her sit-in Friday, alleging a “BJP-EC conspiracy to disenfranchise Bengali voters” through SIR of the electoral roll, and said the upcoming assembly polls would be a farce if genuine voters are not allowed to vote.

To back her charge, the TMC chief had also assembled several people who claimed their names have been struck off the voter list after being marked as “dead”.




The protest was organised ahead of the visit of the full bench of the Election Commission, which is set to arrive in Kolkata Sunday night and stay in the state till Tuesday to review poll preparedness.

The election dates are likely to be announced after the EC team returns to Delhi.

“I will expose the BJP-EC conspiracy to disenfranchise Bengali voters,” the CM said from her dharna stage at the Esplanade. 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. BJP and its agents in EC have crossed all limits.”

TMC Lok Sabha MP Abhishek Banerjee gave a “boycott BJP” call. “If 60 lakh people can be kept under adjudication, why cannot PM’s chair be kept under adjudication? The PM was elected with votes from these people,” he said.

When the curtain lifted on the dharna site around 2pm, Banerjee was sitting on the stage surrounded by key faces of her party. Trinamool’s RS nominees, ex-DGP Rajeev Kumar and senior advocate Menaka Guruswamy, also made their debut appearance.

Meanwhile, BJP dismissed the stir as another “theatrics” aimed at stalling the “cleansing of electoral roll”. “This dharna is definitely not for the people of Bengal. It is to ensure that infiltrators are retained in the electoral roll,” Bengal BJP president Samik Bhattcharya said at the Parivartan Yatra in Howrah.

Union minister Giriraj Singh, who took part in the Parivartan Yatra in WB, said TMC is working to “legitimise citizenship of Muslim infiltrators from Bangladesh”.
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