Election Commission houses ‘BJP agent in its office’: Mamata slams
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Kolkata: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Monday lashed out at the Election Commission, alleging that there were “gross errors” in the draft rolls published following the enumeration phase of the SIR in the state, PTI reported.
Addressing a meeting of TMC's Booth Level Agents (BLAs) at the Netaji Indoor Stadium here, she dubbed it an exercise “riddled with blunders from A to Z”.
Banerjee also accused the poll panel of housing “a BJP agent in its office” and “altering electoral rolls as per his advise”.
She alleged that the EC was appointing observers without informing the state government, and working to foster the interests of the saffron camp.
“The EC is working only as per the directions of the BJP. There are gross errors in mapping of voters during the enumeration phase of the special intensive revision (SIR) exercise in the state. The exercise is a blunder from beginning to end,” the CM asserted.
Alleging that thousands of “legitimate voters” have found their names deleted from the draft rolls, Banerjee said, “We don't know how the problems of so many genuine electors can be solved in so little time.” “I am told that a BJP agent is sitting in the EC office, and it is deleting names as per his wishes. I have never seen such a shameless commission in the past, nor do I want to see a repeat of this current poll body in the future,” she said.
In the draft electoral rolls published after the enumeration phase, 58,20,899 names have been excluded, reducing the electorate to 7.08 crore in West Bengal.
Around 1.36 crore entries have also been flagged for "logical discrepancies", while 30 lakh voters were categorised as unmapped – a significant percentage of whom are likely to be called for verification hearings.