West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee will stage a sit-in demonstration at Esplanade on Friday to protest against the alleged exclusion of valid voters from the final electoral rolls published on Saturday after the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise.
The announcement was made by Abhishek Banerjee, General Secretary of the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC). He said the Chief Minister would begin the protest at 2 pm and outline the party’s next course of action regarding what he described as a “faulty” voter list.
“She will start the protest event from 2 pm on Friday. She will announce what will be our next course of action from the protest event,” Abhishek said.
After the publication of the final voter list, Abhishek raised multiple questions about the role of the Election Commission of India, alleging that names were being excluded through Form 7 even after the stipulated deadline had passed.
He directly questioned the Commission’s impartiality, asking, “On whose instructions is the commission working?” He further alleged that the BJP was exerting political influence over the voter list revision process.
Abhishek cited the example of Richa Ghosh, a member of India’s World Cup-winning women’s cricket team, whose name has reportedly been marked as “Under Adjudication” in the electoral roll.
“If the name of a national team cricketer is not in the list, then India’s World Cup is under adjudication!” he remarked.
Abhishek also displayed video footage, claiming that the BJP had set a “target” for removing names from the voter list. He alleged that senior BJP leaders, including Amit Shah, Suvendu Adhikari, Sukanta Majumdar and Shantanu Thakur, had publicly spoken about the exclusion of voter names.
According to him, BJP leaders had mentioned figures of around 1.2 crore names being removed. He alleged that a comparison of the draft list, final list and pending list indicated a plan to exclude a similar number of voters.
Also read: Zero new voters in 99 WB seats after revision, questions raised