Kolkata, Mar 7: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Saturday alleged that voter deletions in the post-SIR electoral rolls were aimed at dividing the state.
Addressing a gathering during her demonstration against the alleged arbitrary deletions from the electoral roll in the state, Banerjee accused the BJP of depriving Bengali-speaking people of their voting rights.
The CM continued her protest for the second consecutive day on Saturday, after she spent the night at the sit-in site at Metro Channel in central Kolkata.
“Their (Election Commission and BJP) intent is to divide Bengal. The BJP is planning to take away votes by dividing Bengal and turn parts of the state into a union territory. They (BJP leaders) are subjecting Bengali-speaking people to harassment in other states and are conspiring to deprive Bengalis of their voting rights,” Banerjee alleged at the protest site.
The chief minister claimed that a day ago, she saw in a tweet that Bengal and Bihar could be divided to form a union territory.
“Let them touch Bengal if they have the guts. This is their conspiracy. They did it once in Bihar by creating Jharkhand, and now they are trying to do it again,” she said.
Slamming the Election Commission for allegedly deleting lakhs of names in the post-SIR electoral rolls, Banerjee said 36,000 votes were deleted from a single assembly constituency, like Dinhata.
“In my own constituency, 60,000 votes have been deleted. I challenge you to delete the entire voter list,” she said while asking several women from her Bhabanipur constituency to come on the stage and show their documents.
“Are they not the citizens of the country? Don’t they have the right to vote?” she said, accusing the EC of “looting votes”.
“You want to divide Bengal, but first deal with Epstein. Remember, the more you attack us, the stronger the retaliation will be,” she said, referring to the Epstein Files row, but did not elaborate about the link.
“We respect all religions in Bengal and see everyone in society equally, irrespective of caste, creed, or religion. And remember that the Bengali language was recognised long before Independence. I have an old Rs 10 currency note in which the amount is written in Bengali,” she said.
On the occasion of International Women’s Day (March 8), thousands of women will hit the streets in the city on Sunday to protest against the deletion of women’s names from the voter list and the hike in LPG prices, the TMC supremo said, adding that the protesters will wear black clothes.
“Beware BJP. You cannot divide Bengal by deleting votes. And if you cross the limits, your Delhi government will be toppled,” she said.
Banerjee also alleged that the BJP never executes its electoral promises of equal rights and empowerment of women, while the TMC-led Bengal executes these in letter and spirit.
“Bengal is the only state that has 37 per cent elected women representatives in Parliament, and they talk about 33 per cent reservation for women! In panchayats and municipalities, we already have 50 per cent reservation for women. We also have parental leave. Employed women receive around 735 days of leave. They (BJP leaders) only give Rs 10,000 to voters ahead of elections and then come with bulldozers after the polls,” she said.
The TMC supremo had begun the demonstration in central Kolkata on Friday, accusing the Election Commission of conspiring with the BJP to “disenfranchise Bengal voters” ahead of the upcoming assembly elections.
The protest comes just days before the full bench of the Election Commission is scheduled to visit West Bengal, amid rising political tensions over the voter list revision ahead of the assembly polls.
According to official data released on February 28, as many as 63.66 lakh names — around 8.3 per cent of the electorate — have been deleted since the SIR process began in November last year, reducing the voter base from about 7.66 crore to just over 7.04 crore.
In addition, over 60.06 lakh electors have been placed under the “under adjudication” category, meaning their eligibility will be determined through legal scrutiny in the coming weeks, a process that could further reshape constituency-level electoral equations. (PTI)
