Kolkata, March 1 Trinamool Congress national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee announced on Sunday that party supremo and Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee will stage a protest in Kolkata on March 6 to protest against the alleged deletion of names from the final voter list in West Bengal following the SIR process.
Addressing a press conference, Banerjee said, “The BJP cannot win the Assembly elections. That is why it is using the Election Commission to manipulate the election results by deleting genuine voters. BJP leaders have set a target of deleting over one crore voters in Bengal. This decision was made even before the SIR process began here. To protest against the arbitrary deletion of names, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee will stage a protest in Kolkata on March 6.”
He said the protest would be held at Esplanade in central Kolkata, where Mamata Banerjee had staged a 26-day hunger strike in 2008.
“Why is the Election Commission not publishing a list of Bangladeshis and Rohingyas who have been identified during the SIR process in Bengal? This is nothing but a lie manufactured by the BJP. Deleting genuine voters from Bengal’s voter list will not benefit the BJP, as it will not win more than 50 seats in the Assembly elections,” Banerjee said.
Abhishek Banerjee alleged that the exclusion of a large number of names is against the democratic process. He claimed that the voting rights of ordinary people are being curtailed in the name of revising the voter list and questioned the role of the Election Commission in the matter.
“The Election Commission will have to take responsibility for this. So many people have died in Bengal due to the SIR process. In the name of logical discrepancies, the Election Commission has only followed the BJP's diktat, which is to remove over one crore names from the voter list,” he said.
According to him, party leaders and workers from across the state will attend the protest on March 6 to stand by Mamata Banerjee in her protest against the deletion of names.