The all-party meeting convened by Bengal chief electoral officer Manoj Kumar Agarwal on Tuesday on the launch of the contentious special intensive revision (SIR) in Bengal was rocked by questions on why proof of citizenship was being tacitly brought to the table when that had never been the stated objective of the Election Commission of India’s exercise.
CPM central committee member Samik Lahiri, who along with Sujan Chakraborty, was among the most vocal representatives of the party, said he asked Agarwal very specific questions regarding the documents being sought by the commission for inclusion in the electoral roll during the SIR.
“There are 12 documents specified by the Election Commission — under the Supreme Court’s supervision — of which it is being stated clearly by Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar that Aadhaar is not to be deemed a proof of citizenship. Does that mean the other 11 prove citizenship? Is proof of citizenship what the commission is really conducting the SIR for? Is this the SIR, or is it a preparatory stage of the feared, exclusionary NRC (National Register of Citizens)?” asked Lahiri, who is also the editor of the party’s Bengali mouthpiece Ganashakti.
Lahiri later said that Agarwal had no fitting response to such questions.
Trinamool Congress leaders also voiced concerns that were not dissimilar to this regarding citizenship at the meeting.
Predictably, only the BJP had no such input to offer and ended up offering a fierce defence of the SIR and the Election Commission.
Sources in Agarwal’s office, however, claimed later that the chief electoral officer wondered aloud from where the questions related to citizenship arose in connection with the documents sought for the SIR by the commission.
They said Agarwal added that the list of documents sought had the sanction of the Supreme Court.
While the meeting was taking place, Trinamool national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee held a news conference lambasting the BJP and the allegedly compromised Nirvachan Sadan under chief election commissioner Kumar — whom several INDIA constituents, including the Congress, have accused of being Union home minister Amit Shah’s stooge.
The Diamond Harbour MP said the SIR in Bengal was specifically designed to exclude genuine voters to tilt the electoral scales in favour of the BJP next summer.
Calling the SIR “Silent Invisible Rigging” yet again, Abhishek said: “A BJP-allied organisation (the commission) announced the SIR... the process is not inclusionary,
but exclusionary.”
“In our democracy earlier, the people used to elect governments. Now, this BJP-led government wants to select its electors, decide which citizen gets to vote and who doesn’t,” added chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s nephew and heir apparent.
“If there are discrepancies in the electoral roll on the basis of which the 18th Lok Sabha was elected last year, and the Union government formed on its basis, then they should all be dissolved, and fresh elections must be conducted.”
Abhishek said if infiltration from Bangladesh and Myanmar (Rohingya refugees) were indeed the foremost concern in this exercise, why was no SIR being conducted rightaway in the five Northeast states that border the two countries.
“If the name of even one eligible voter is eliminated, one lakh people from Bengal will descend upon Nirvachan Sadan in New Delhi, holding sit-in demonstration.... The game that they began, we will finish,” Abhishek said.
“Despite all of this, we will reduce the BJP to less than 50 (out of 294 Assembly seats),” added the MP.
The BJP rubbished the allegations. Its state unit’s election management wing chief Sishir Bajoria, present at the meeting, later tore into their political opponents for “baseless fear mongering” over the SIR and weaving with it issues such as the NRC.
“They are lying and deliberately encouraging panic to stoke fear among people.... The SIR will cleanse, sanitise, purify the electoral rolls, which is a must, and which the commission is well within its rights and constitutional duties to carry out,” Bajoria said.