Kolkata: Many of the members belonging to the Trinamool Congress (TMC)-backed faction of the All-India Matua Mahasangha fell ill while undertaking hunger strike at Thakurbari. The hunger strike is being carried out under the leadership of its president and Rajya Sabha MP Mamatabala Thakur demanding the immediate cancellation of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls.
Some of the members were given saline. They had faced dehydrations. The protest was launched in front of the room of Binapani Devi (Boroma) at Thakurnagar, the community’s spiritual headquarters.
Sources in the Trinamool Congress said the party fears that nearly 60 per cent of voters in the existing rolls—mostly Matuas and other Hindu migrants from Bangladesh who arrived after 2000—could face deletion under the SIR process.
Mamatabala in her recent statement said: “We apprehend that the SIR would rob the voting rights of backward communities like the Matuas.
The rights ensured by the Indian Constitution are now being robbed by the BJP-led government through an organised conspiracy. To protest this and demand immediate cancellation of the SIR, we have decided to begin a fast-unto-death.”