Holding a sheaf of papers in her hands, Mamata Banerjee read out a list of names and cited that electoral rolls were being manipulated with the blessings of the Election Commission in Bengal ahead of the Assembly election early next year.
“The cat is out of the bag now. This is how the BJP is manipulating the voters’ list with the blessings of the Election Commission (EC). This has been exposed now. It is your responsibility to stop fake voters being included in the voters’ list,” Mamata said addressing Trinamul’s elected representatives, leaders and functionaries at the Netaji Indoor stadium, Calcutta.
Mamata said the BJP had hatched a conspiracy to revise the electoral rolls packed with outsiders to occupy Bengal.
“We will not allow this to happen. If the BJP succeeds in its nefarious plans that would mean the end of Bengal’s culture. We respect guests, but we won’t allow outsiders to occupy Bengal. This is not Delhi or Maharashtra. This is being done with the blessings of the EC.”
Mamata said the manipulation was being carried out in the Assembly seats where the BJP’s losing margin was narrow in the 2021 elections.
“They will stoop to such levels to win elections? We have to ensure the BJP, CPM and Congress candidates forfeit their deposits in the elections. We want to see who is more powerful, people or the agency (central ones like ED, CBI)?” Mamata said.
In a throwback to her days in the Congress, when the late minister and Mamata’s mentor Subrata Mukherjee was labelled, “watermelon” for his alleged proximity to the CPM, Mamata referred to the BJP as “saffron comrades.”
“BJP is now saffron comrade. On the outside they are saffron, inside is red,” she said.
Mamata said she had got a list of names from South Dinajpur’s Gangarampur and Murshidabad’s Raninagar as samples of how old voters were being removed by new voters with the same photo identity card number issued by the Election Commission.
She read out the names of one Mohammad Shahidul Islam from Raninagar, against whose EPIC number one Sonia Devi from Haryana has been included and a Manjeet from Haryana shares the same card with Raninagar’s Mohammad Ali Hussain.
“Here is Raninagar’s Panera Biwi and one Deepak also from Haryana. Are the elections going to happen in Haryana or Bengal?” she asked. “These people will vote in Murshidabad where elections will be held in the earlier phases and then go to North 24-Parganas and South 24-Parganas. South Dinajpur’s Gangarampur is entirely made of people from Gujarat like this Jignesh Madhvana from Ahmedabad with Taslim Mian in Gangarampur.”
Mamata alleged the BJP had hired two agencies --- Association of Billion Minds and another subsidiary India 360 --- which were including the names of people from distant states like Gujarat, Rajasthan, Punjab and Haryana in the voters’ list through the online system.
“The people working for these agencies have not conducted any field surveys. With the help of some assistant returning officers and data operators they are manipulating the electoral rolls. People from Bengal will not be allowed to vote,” Mamata said. “Online does not mean voters from Haryana Rajasthan Punjab will get to vote here. We can sit in dharna outside Nirvachan Bhawan for days if required.”
She said the Trinamul’s Rajya Sabha MP Sagorika Ghose had brought the matter to her attention.
“This is how they won in Maharashtra and Delhi. They (the Shiv Sena (UBT), Congress in Maharashtra and AAP in Delhi) failed to understand this but we have caught them. This must have happened in every district. We cannot let this go unchecked.”
Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi had flagged the issue of alleged manipulation of electoral roll in the Maharashta Assembly election on the floor of the Parliament and asked answers from the EC.
Mamata has instructed party state president Subrata Bakshi to head a committee comprising Abhishek Banerjee, Derek O’Brien, Sudip Bandyopadhyay and several other MPs, MLAs, state ministers and party leaders to review the voters’ list in each of the blocks.
“The future of the MPs also depends on this (voters list revision). I don’t trust the BJP. Under one nation, one election, they can hold Assembly and Lok Sabha polls together. The MPs will also have to work on cleansing the list,” she said.
Mamata instructed the party functionaries at the block level to scrutinise the electoral rolls. The work will start from Friday and has to be completed within 10 days.
At least four members of the committee will be available at Trinamul Bhawan to listen to the party workers from the blocks and districts in problems rectifying the discrepancies in the electoral rolls.
Mamata told the party workers that the changes in the electoral rolls could have a sinister design as it could raise a question mark on the citizenship of a resident under the Citizenship Amendment Act and the National Register of Citizens.
Mamata also had a word of caution for the district unit heads. Singling out the Birbhum district president Anubrata Mondal, Mamata said, “You have to take Kajal (Sheikh Kajal, Mondal’s rival in the district) into confidence.”
Elected representatives in the panchayats and the civic bodies were instructed to keep the people’s interests above their own.