Upping the ante against the Election Commission (EC) over the SIR exercise, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday claimed that the poll panel brought in the concept of “logical discrepancies” to remove genuine voters from the electoral roll. She also slammed the EC for “unilaterally” deleting 54 lakh names from the draft roll without giving them a chance to present their case.
Addressing a press conference at the state secretariat, Nabanna, the chief minister said, “They have already deleted 54 lakhs names, but did not give any explanation why they deleted so many names. Now, they are planning to delete another 1.30 crores in the name of logical discrepancies. This term was not mentioned when the SIR was announced.”
Logical discrepancy was not part of the original SIR verification process, and it was included as an afterthought to add to deletions, the TMC chief said, alleging a “BJP-EC nexus”.
On December 16, the EC released the draft roll of West Bengal in which the names of over 58 lakh electors were deleted on grounds of being absent, shifted, dead and duplication.
Before the launch of the SIR exercise, there were 7.6 crore voters on the roll. After the first phase of SIR, 7.08 crore (92.40%) names were retained in the draft electoral roll, and 58 lakh names were removed.
“They (EC officials) are not accepting domicile certificate or any other documents of the state government. Why are they doing this? They (the Opposition BJP) are thinking that by doing such things, they will win Bengal. They are playing the same game in Bengal that they had played in Bihar or Maharashtra,” the Chief Minister said.
Without taking any names, she alleged that an Army commandant is involved in the SIR exercise by acting “like a BJP agent”. “I have information that a commandant is working for SIR at Fort William. He is working as a BJP agent. I request him, please don’t do this,” the CM said. Fort William in Kolkata is the operational headquarters of the Indian Army’s Eastern Command. She also claimed that thousands of Form 7 (objection forms) were recovered from a BJP leader’s car during a police check.
The ruling TMC, in a post on X, claimed, “A vehicle of BJP leaders carrying approximately 3,000–4,000 objection forms (Form 7) was caught with voter names and details pre-filled across the district, but a majority of them are from Taldangra AC. There were five BJP workers… Two were caught, while three fled the spot. An FIR has been lodged against them.”