Kolkata: Trinamool Congress (TMC), the ruling party in West Bengal, has been opposing the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in the state from the outset, questioning the timing and manner of the process.
On Friday, TMC further upped the ante with an extremely serious allegation against Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar.
A TMC delegation met the full Election Commission of India (ECI) bench and claimed that there have been at least 40 deaths linked to the SIR in the state, accusing the CEC of having “blood on his hands.”
The 10-member delegation, led by TMC Rajya Sabha leader Derek O’Brien, also included Lok Sabha MPs Mahua Moitra, Satabdi Roy, Kalyan Banerjee, Pratima Mondal, Sajda Ahmed, and Rajya Sabha MPs Dola Sen, Mamata Thakur, Saket Gokhale and Prakash Chik Barik.
O’Brien told reporters after the meeting that the party raised five questions, but Gyanesh Kumar did not give any answers.
“We started the meeting by stating that the CEC has blood on his hands. We raised five questions. After this, Kalyan Banerjee, Mahua Moitra, and Mamata Bala Thakur spoke and shared whatever they had to in about 40 minutes,” O’Brien said.
“Then the CEC spoke uninterrupted for one hour. We were also not interrupted while we spoke, but we did not receive any answer to any of our five questions,” O’Brien said.
Moitra informed newspersons that the TMC lawmakers shared with the CEC a list of 40 people whose deaths, they alleged, were linked to the SIR process.
The poll panel dismissed it as mere allegations, Moitra said.
O’Brien reiterated that TMC is not opposed to the concept of SIR, but is “strongly opposed to the completely unplanned and heartless manner in which the CEC and EC are going about the job.”
The party’s Rajya Sabha MP Mamata Thakur said: “If infiltrators are there, then why are Mizoram, Tripura, Arunachal, Nagaland not included (in SIR process), and only West Bengal is included? They say they are not voters and torture Bengalis across states. People think they are not speaking Bangla, and brand them Bangladeshis.”
Speaking on the issue of deaths of several Booth Level Officers (BLOs) in Bengal, Thakur said that the ECI is “not accepting” that the deaths were due to the SIR.
Congress spokesperson Supriya Shrinate had earlier claimed that 26 BLOs have died in 210 days, calling it “murder in broad daylight.”
