Mamata Banerjee on Thursday tore into the saffron regime and the allegedly compromised Election Commission of India under it, claiming the poll panel was threatening officials of her government much before the notification of the Bengal Assembly polls.
Once again tearing into Union home minister Amit Shah, the Bengal chief minister and Trinamool Congress chief repeated that the special intensive revision (SIR) was a "backdoor NRC". The buck of the poll panel's contentious SIR, according to her, stops with him.
"The commission is threatening Bengal government officials. We will not tolerate this," said the Trinamool Congress chief at a news conference in state secretariat Nabanna on Thursday evening.
Mamata has been unrelenting since July in her attacks on the saffron regime over the alleged linguistic apartheid fuelled by their “Bengali-phobia”. With it, she has woven in the issue of “backdoor NRC” by an allegedly compromised EC, which she says is a “conspiracy to disenfranchise” the poor and the marginalised who she believes are unlikely to vote for the BJP.
Raising questions on the conduct of commission officials visiting the state, the chief minister wondered aloud how they could behave as though elections have been announced.
"Already, how can commission officials visiting the state summon our government officials?" asked Mamata, adding that she had a lot to reveal by way of evidence against even the Bengal chief electoral officer, albeit without naming Manoj Agarwal.
"He himself stands accused of corruption... there is a distinct conspiracy to eliminate voters with the excuse of the SIR. I have all the evidence," she said. "This SIR process is not at all what it is being portrayed as... it is being secretly used to carry out a backdoor NRC-type exercise in Bengal."
In the past, she has repeatedly attacked chief election commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, alleging that he has simply been carrying out Shah's orders.
Mamata is not alone in this. Most INDIA constituents, including the Congress, have accused Kumar of obsequiously carrying out Shah's orders even while helming the constitutionally autonomous poll panel.
"The BJP is playing with fire in the name of the SIR, and they must correct course. They misuse every central agency for politics, not for public service. They communalise... saffronise everything, from education to culture, even festivals," she said.
"How can a Union minister say that 1.5 crore voters will be deleted (from Bengal)? Is this being decided this in a party office? Even before the exercise begins? The Election Commission must decide whether it will be impartial," she said, referring to a purported claim by junior Union minister Shantanu Thakur.
Mamata said Shah should either come clean on the claim or have Thakur sacked, asserting that such indications go a long way to underscore how the SIR was essentially an instrument to serve the BJP.
She said that yet again, NRC notices have been coming to Indian citizens in Bengal from Assam.
"I have heard that the Union home minister, during a party meeting, mentioned voter deletions. But who gave him that right? Democracy cannot function by excluding people. This is not SIR, this is a backdoor NRC," said Mamata.
"There is a Mir Jafar sitting in Delhi. They think they can control everything, but if they continue this way, the truth will come out, the cat will be out of the bag. If genuine voters are removed, the people of Bengal will respond in a way no other state can," she added.
"Beyond doing politics, manipulating elections, tampering with data and looting votes, they have done nothing for the people’s development.... They send the country’s wealth abroad and return wearing gold medals, while the poor in India stay hungry."