Kolkata: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has accused the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Election Commission of India of attempting to manipulate voter lists ahead of upcoming elections.
Addressing supporters on the second day of her protest in Kolkata, Banerjee alleged that large-scale deletions of names from electoral rolls under the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) process were part of a “deep conspiracy” to divide the state.
She claimed that Bengali-speaking voters were being deprived of their voting rights to benefit the BJP in the upcoming assembly elections.
Banerjee also alleged that some living voters had been wrongly marked as “deceased” in official records and removed from the voter list. She said such cases would soon be presented before the media and the Election Commission.
According to figures released on February 28, around 6.366 million voters have been removed from electoral rolls since November, accounting for about 8.3% of the total electorate. In addition, the eligibility of more than six million voters is still under legal scrutiny.
The protest comes as senior leaders and workers of the All India Trinamool Congress gathered in large numbers in support of the chief minister, ahead of an expected visit by a full bench of the Election Commission to the state.
