As Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday launched a blistering attack on the BJP and the Election Commission (EC) for conducting the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in poll-bound West Bengal, she assured the people of the state that not a single genuine voter’s name would be deleted.
She warned that the fall of the Narendra Modi government would be “inevitable” if even a single eligible voter were deleted from the state’s rolls.
“If you don’t have papers, come to our camps. We will help you at any cost. Proyojone thalabati beche sahajyo korbo (If necessary, we will sell our utensils to help you all,” the chief minister said, referring to camps set up by her party, the TMC, across the state to help people get their names registered.
On a day, the SIR was rolled out in the state with over 80,000 BLOs beginning door-to-door survey, TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee and nephew Abhishek led a massive padyatra against the SIR in Kolkata – a 4-km march from Dr BR Ambedkar statue on Red Road to Jorasanko Thakurbari, the birthplace of Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore.
Addressing the crowd following the conclusion of the march, the chief minister termed the SIR – “silent, invisible rigging”.
“We have to continue our fight. Do not be afraid of the central agencies. All of this is happening because of the elections. Take legal help if required. I want to tell Matuas, do not be afraid, Didi is here. I will do whatever it takes. If they use force to deport you, then many others will also have to face the force. Minorities also need not worry,” the chief minister said amid concerns over the SIR as a citizenship test.
Matuas, a Scheduled Caste community, had migrated to India from Bangladesh.
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Questioning the “hasty implementation” of the SIR process, the chief minister said, “The last time SIR was held was after the 2001 elections. There was no election in Bengal in 2002-2003. After the SIR was held, elections were held in 2004. The exercise went on for two-and-a-half years. So what is the rush today? If the name of even one eligible voter is left out, I will topple the BJP government.”
Without naming the Prime Minister and Union Home Minister Amit Shah, the TMC chief said, “If you are such a big nationalist, then answer this. There are four election-bound states – West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and Assam. You ordered SIR in three Opposition-ruled states but not in the double-engine state of Assam. Why? You will declare elections in February. So, we have three months in between. Can you cover 10 crore population and fill all the forms in these three months, something that took two to three years? You could have done it after the polls. Why not Assam? It is because you would have lost. I challenge you! You cannot always win with false votes,” the chief minister added.
Referring to the BJP’s claim that SIR would help weed out “illegal Rohingya and Bangladeshis”, she said: “If Rohingyas and Bangladeshis come, where will they come from? The Rohingyas will come from Nagaland, Mizoram, and Arunachal Pradesh. Did you do SIR there? Bangladeshis come from Tripura and Assam also. You removed 19 lakh names in Assam (during the NRC and among them 12 lakh were Hindus and other religions. They (the BJP) have such audacity that they will do whatever they please just because they are in power.”
Accusing Shah of hypocrisy, the TMC chief said, “He criticises our so-called dynastic politics, yet he has appointed his own son to the highest post in ICC.”
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Taking on the Election Commission, the chief minister asked if the names of someone’s parents are not on the list, would they have to prove again that they were born in this state? “The Commission is creating multiple confusions in the rolls. Who will take responsibility for these mistakes? Wouldn’t it have been better to conduct this exercise after the elections? Do we have to prove our citizenship even after so many years of birth and independence?” she said.
TMC MP and No. 2 in the party, Abhishek Banerjee, accused the Prime Minister of “dictating terms to the poor and middle class at his whims” and likened the SIR process to earlier decisions such as demonetisation.
“Be it demonetisation or demanding endless citizenship documents, Modi has always imposed his diktats on the common man. We will not bow before the zamindars of Delhi,” the Diamond Harbour MP said.
He claimed that panic over the SIR had already cost lives and that Bengal would not remain silent if genuine voters were removed from the rolls.
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“When they issued the SIR notification in June, we said that if even a single genuine voter’s name is struck off, Bengal’s might will be shown in the heart of Delhi. Today I am asking everyone: are you ready to go to Delhi? We will show the strength of Bengal to the whole country,” he said.
The TMC leader alleged that a BJP-affiliated body and the Election Commission of India had together unleashed “a campaign of fear” through the SIR, leading to “suicides of those labelled Bangladeshi despite their names being on the 2002 voter rolls”.
“A pregnant woman and six family members were deported by branding them as Bangladeshis, even after the High Court ruled that both her parents’ names were on the list. This is the reality of the BJP’s politics of exclusion,” he added.
