Mamata Banerjee has raised the impeachment wand against chief election commissioner Gyanesh Kumar.
Addressing the media in Chanakyapuri’s New Banga Bhawan on Tuesday, Mamata said: “If something is genuine, practical and in favour of the people… we also want him to be impeached. We don’t have the numbers. There is a provision for impeachment. It will be recorded.”
On Monday evening, Mamata had a meeting with Kumar at Nirvachan Sadan from which she walked out claiming she was “humiliated and insulted.”
“He never replied. He was threatening us,” Mamata said in reply to a question on what had transpired in the nearly hour-long meeting, where she was accompanied by Trinamool MPs Abhishek Banerjee and Kalyan Bandyopadhyay.
On Tuesday’s event, sitting behind Mamata were family members of the alleged “victims” of the special intensive revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls.
“People sitting behind us are all SIR victims. I could have brought lakhs of people here. They are not giving any opportunity to the SIR victims to defend themselves,” she said.
Mamata has filed a petition with the Supreme Court. She is likely to be at the apex court on Wednesday during another hearing on the bunch of petitions filed against the SIR process.
In Delhi, Mamata announced the BJP will not come to power in Bengal after the Assembly elections are held.
“BJP will not come to power in Bengal. The people hate the BJP. The voters of BJP are going to vote for us,” said the Bengal chief minister. “In my constituency they have deleted 40,000 voters, unilaterally. The EC is acting on the behest of the BJP.”
Neither the chief election commissioner nor any other member has yet replied to the charges levelled by Mamata.
A source in the commission claimed the Trinamool representatives had used abusive and threatening language against the commission and the CEC, as well as other poll officials.
A source in the commission said the poll panel had reiterated its demands from the Bengal government on the transfers of officials, action against errant officials, alleged hooliganism by Trinamool cadres, and the payment of a higher honorarium to the BLOs.
“(The) CEC responded to her queries and explained (the) rule of law shall prevail and anybody taking law into their own hands shall be dealt with strictly as per the provisions of law and powers vested in the commission,” the official said.
The Samajwadi party chief and Kannauj MP Akhilesh Yadav, who had met Mamata recently at the state secretariat in Bengal, alleged the EC was working in cohorts with the BJP to delete the names of voters from the backward classes, Dalits and Tribals, via form-7 used for raising objections on any name in the electoral rolls.
“Some people are of the view that an IAS officer posted in the chief minister’s office is exerting pressure on the divisional commissioners and district magistrates to cut the names of the PDA (Pichhra, Dalit and Adivasi) voters from the list,” Akhilesh said addressing a news conference in Lucknow on Tuesday.