‘SIR code for voter list manipulation’: Suvendu admitted plan to ‘rig polls’ in Bengal, claims Trinamool

Kolkata: BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari’s open statement from the protest rally in Kolkata that the game will be played in Bengal exactly the same way what happened in Bihar, probably referring to the exercise of Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, has handed over a weapon to the ruling Trinamool Congress to sharpen its attack on the saffron party on the SIR. Trinamool Congress also claimed that what they have apprehended with regard to the SIR turned out to be true as Adhikari publicly declared that the same game that was played in Bihar in the name of SIR of electoral rolls would occur in Bengal.

Incidentally Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee and national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee have expressed their apprehension that the Election Commission of India (ECI) may implement SIR in Bengal and the names of genuine voters would be deleted from the list. Both the top leaders of the Trinamool Congress already asserted that they would not allow the ECI to implement the SIR. Abhishek on Friday reiterated that SIR of electoral rolls cannot be performed in 1-2 months. Trinamool Congress also alleged that it was an attempt to remove the names of legitimate voters. It also accused the ECI of acting as a “puppet” in the hands of the BJP-led Central government. Trinamool Congress on Saturday wrote on X: “There it is. Mask off, truth out. @BJP4India’s Bengal LoP @SuvenduWB openly confessed that the “game” will be played by @ECISVEEP exactly how it was done in Bihar. This is a public admission that @BJP4India plans to rig Bengal’s elections by weaponizing the Election Commission.” It further stated: “Special Intensive Revision is nothing but a coded term for voter list manipulation, disenfranchisement, and stealing the people’s mandate. When the referee turns a player, democracy is the first casualty.”

Meanwhile, an office of the Indian National Trinamool Trade Union Congress (INTTUC), the trade union wing of the TMC, located in Park Street area in central Kolkata was allegedly vandalised on Saturday during the protest march to Bengal secretariat ‘Nabanna’ organised to mark one year of the rape and murder of a woman doctor at state-run RG Kar Hospital. On a day the city witnessed to “pre-planned vandalism” orchestrated by the BJP in the name of ‘Nabanna Abhijan’, leading to a clash between the police personnel and the protestors, the ruling Trinamool Congress called it an attempt to “destabilise the state on the day of Raksha Bandha”. Though the BJP claimed that ‘Nabanna Abhijan’ was called by the parents of the junior doctor who was raped and murdered in RG Kar Medical College in August last year, the Trinamool Congress alleged that the BJP used the sentiment of the parents to politically utilise it.The ruling party in Bengal also raised questions on the credibility of a Nabanna march on the day of a festival when the CBI was carrying out court monitored probe into the rape and murder of a postgraduate trainee doctor.