BJP trying to add illegal voters from outside to Bengal electoral rolls: Mamata

KOLKATA, Mar 31: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday alleged that the BJP was trying to include illegal voters from NDA-ruled Bihar, Rajasthan, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh in the electoral rolls of the state to turn the poll outcome in favour of the saffron party.
Addressing an election rally in Paschim Medinipur’s Chandrakona, Banerjee also reiterated her plea before the gathering to ignore who the TMC candidates in the state’s assembly segments were and consider her as the candidate in all 294 seats.
“I was informed by Abhishek (Banerjee) yesterday that he had to rush to the EC office in Kolkata from the middle of his campaign schedule upon receiving information that about 30,000 forms were submitted in a single day to include fresh voters,” the TMC supremo said.
“The BJP is trying to include illegal voters from Bihar, Rajasthan, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh in the electoral rolls of Bengal. They are planning to transport outstation voters by means of railways, as they did in Bihar, and get them to poll in seats of Asansol and Kharagpur,” she alleged.
Banerjee’s allegation came on a day the TMC supremo shot a strongly-worded letter to Chief Election Commissioner, Gyanesh Kumar, stating that the Form 6 applications, pertaining to “not genuine residents of Bengal having no legitimate connection to the state”, are “illegal, unconstitutional and fundamentally undemocratic, reflecting mala fide intent and ill motive”.
If the BJP tries to “squeeze in illegal voters from outside” in Bengal’s electoral rolls, people will resist, she said.
“It will not get a single vote because the people of Bengal know that the saffron party has implemented this trick in states like Bihar and Maharashtra and got away with it because the opposition there failed to understand the ploy,” Banerjee said at her second poll rally of the day in Garbeta.
She alleged that the BJP had “no respect” for Bengal and its people.
Addressing another poll rally in Bankura’s Bishnupur, the TMC supremo claimed, “The BJP is a barbaric party. It tortures Bengali-speaking migrants and shoves TMC MPs in police lock-ups when they protest.”
The saffron party is “jealous of Bengali youths’ intellect, their professional success, cultural superiority”, she alleged.
Banerjee also added, “The BJP leaders hate me because they know, unlike others, I can’t be bought over.”
The chief minister, while addressing the Garbeta public meeting, accused the saffron party of colluding with the Election Commission and deleting names of women and minorities from the state’s electoral rolls in the garb of the Special Intensive Revision exercise.
“It broke my heart to see the pictures of mothers and sisters belonging to Hindu, tribal, Muslim and scheduled caste communities, as well as elderly citizens, standing in queues once again to appeal before tribunals after their names were deleted from the SIR rolls. SIR means ‘sarvanash’ (devastation),” she said.
Banerjee claimed that it was her legal challenge before the Supreme Court that made the EC add 22 lakh names to the rolls.
On 18 lakh deletions from supplementary lists, Banerjee alleged, “The BJP and the EC are snatching the citizenship, constitutional and democratic rights of people. We will fight them every inch of the way.”
According to the post-SIR electoral rolls, released on February 28, 63.66 lakh names, around 8.3 per cent of the electorate, have been deleted since the roll revision 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 in the “under adjudication” category, and following judicial scrutiny, the EC has been releasing supplementary lists containing names from that segment.
At the Garbeta rally, the CM claimed that “the BJP would have deleted 5 crore names” from Bengal’s electoral rolls had her party not fought back.
“Forget who your TMC candidate is in your respective constituencies, consider me your candidate in all 294 seats of the state,” she told the gathering.
Maintaining that the BJP would impose “ban on non-veg food consumption” of Bengalis if it comes to power in the state, the CM said the TMC would thwart the “Centre’s attempts to implement NRC in the state through a backdoor” and “its plans of sending targeted citizens to detention camps”.
“Beware of the BJP. They will curb your choice of food, as they have done in other BJP-ruled states,” Banerjee said.
“There will be no detention camps and no NRC in Bengal as long as we are in power,” the TMC supremo added.
She also slammed the BJP for releasing a ‘charge sheet’ against her government last week.
“Why shouldn’t the BJP be chargesheeted for deleting lakhs of genuine voters, engineering riots and stopping Bengal’s legitimate funds,” the TMC chief said in Bankura.
Banerjee said that it was time to topple the BJP-led central government, which, she alleged, has politicised all statutory and constitutional bodies of the country, depriving citizens of their recourse to rights and justice.
“We will take Delhi after coming to power in Bengal. BJP has converted all constitutional bodies into their party offices. It’s high time we take them back,” she said. (Agencies)