Mamata Banerjee accused the Narendra Modi government of saffronising the electoral rolls along with the institutions and the festivals of India.
“Complete saffronisation of electoral rolls is going on,” Mamata said addressing a news conference at the state secretariat on Thursday evening.
At an internal meeting of the BJP, attended by two of the central minders Bhupendra Yadav and former Tripura chief minister Biplab Deb, the junior union minister Shantanu Thakur had commented one crore names would be deleted from the electoral rolls after the completion of the special intensive revision.
Thakur’s words were echoed by the leader of Opposition in the state Assembly Suvendu Adhikari.
Political analyst Yogendra Yadav has claimed the names of six lakh Muslim voters have been excluded from the final electoral rolls after the completion of SIR and 16 lakh women are missing from the rolls.
In an article for the Indian Express recently, co-written by Yadav, he said Bihar should have had 8.22 crore voters, but the final list published by the EC has around 7.42 crore. Thus, about 80 lakh voters are missing from the list, which Yadav says is a cause for concern.
Mamata also had complaints against the state chief electoral officer Manoj Agarwal.
Shunted for his insistence on filing an FIR over Public Distribution System (PDS) irregularities in 2018 as then Bengal food and supplies secretary, Agarwal was selected to oversee the poll process bypassing other officers recommended by the state government.
Former minister Jyotipriya Mullick was later arrested in the PDS scam.
“There are several complaints against the chief electoral officer. Asha korbo uni bere khelben na… He will not over-react. He is threatening officials,” Mamata alleged. “Only during elections, the administration comes under the control of the EC. There is no election now. Why are the officials being summoned for meetings?”
On Wednesday, the EC directed officials in the state to expedite the voter list mapping process as part of preparations for the SIR, within seven days.
According to sources in the state administration nearly 40 per cent of the task is pending, as it involved comparing the present list with that from 2002 when the last such exercise took place to prepare a fool-proof list.
A day ago Mamata had warned Modi against Union home minister Amit Shah, whom she called Mir Jafar.
The Bengal chief minister repeated the charge from the state secretariat.
“The Mir Jafars think they will be in power forever. There are many cases against them. One day the cat will come out of the bag. Don’t play with NRC. Don’t play with fire. Control yourself. Drop the minister who says names will be deleted or admit a conspiracy is at work,” Mamata said.
Reiterating NRC will not be allowed in Bengal, Mamata accused the Assam government of sending notices to state residents from the foreigners’ tribunal in the neighbouring state.
Talking to reporters, Suvendu Adhikari, the leader of Opposition in the Bengal Assembly, said the increase in voters in over 100 constituencies was between 20-30 per cent, with mostly undocumented settlers coming from Bangladesh who had acquired documents later.
“The national average in new voters is around seven per cent. In Bengal, at least in 105 constituencies the average increase is between 20–30 per cent. The increase of voters in Rajarhat-New Town is 28 per cent, Domkal 30 per cent and Jalangi 27 per cent,” Suvendu said.
The leader of Opposition claimed 13 lakh Aadhaar cards had been cancelled in Bengal. “We had submitted 16 lakh names which were enrolled in multiple constituencies. Thus 29 lakh are automatically deleted. If the process is carried out rightfully over one crore names will be deleted,” he said.
