Kolkata, Feb 2 (PTI) Senior BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari on Monday said that the BJP will not allow the West Bengal assembly elections to be held unless the state’s electoral rolls were cleaned thoroughly by the ongoing SIR exercise with only genuine voters on the list.
Speaking to reporters after submitting a memorandum to Governor CV Ananda Bose at the Lok Bhavan here where the BJP alleged deliberate harassment of voters by EROs, AEROs and BLOs working in “collusion” with the TMC and its political advisor firm I-PAC, Adhikari also called Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s activities in Delhi during the day a “planned drama”.
“We will not allow the state elections to take place with erroneous electoral rolls. If the poll process is not completed in Bengal by midnight on May 5, President’s Rule will automatically be invoked, and the state would be ruled from the Lok Bhavan,” he said.
Asked about Banerjee alleging that she was “humiliated by an arrogant Chief Election Commissioner” prompting her to “boycott” her meeting with the full body EC in Delhi and stage a walkout, Adhikari said it was a ploy to earn sympathies of people in the wake of her “growing unpopularity”.
“Whatever she did in Delhi today was a planned drama. She claimed to not have time to change the saree she wore overnight when she came down to confront the police, but strangely she had enough time to carry her microphone and portable loudspeaker so that everyone could hear what she said,” the Leader of Opposition said.
“She knows she is at the receiving end of grievances of a large number of unemployed people, factory workers, teachers, police and health workers. The Sanatani Hindus of Bengal as well as the tribals have turned against her. So, she is trying to earn the sympathies of voters like she did in 2021 by tying a bandage on an uninjured foot,” he added.
Adhikari, accompanied by a team of 14 BJP leaders including 12 MLAs, sought Bose’s intervention in advising Chief Secretary Nandini Chakraborty that a section of state-appointed SIR personnel, either individually or collectively, were disrupting the SIR exercise.
“We submitted the memorandum to the governor because the chief secretary turned down our request for a meeting today citing unavailability,” Adhikari claimed.
The BJP alleged that a section of EROs, AEROs and BLOs were deliberately making mistakes in uploading SIR data to harass voters. The memorandum stated that the state was yet to appoint data entry operators in spite of repeated requests from EC and that several EROs violated commission guidelines by appointing contractual employees as scrutinisers of enumeration forms, issuers of notices or conductors of hearings.
While the chief minister claimed 140 deaths in the state on account of SIR-related anxieties, Adhikari passed the responsibility of those deaths on Banerjee’s shoulders.
“There is only one person in the CEO’s office who has been deputed by the EC and that is Manoj Agarwal, the CEO himself. All others, from the top officers to those who are lowest in the chain, are state’s employees. The 90,000-odd BLOs were provided by the state. So too were the EROs and AEROs.
“She held two meetings with the DMs in the middle of the SIR process, asking them not to delete names. So whatever deaths may have taken place is her responsibility,” Adhikari said.
He questioned the TMC’s SIR-related sensitivity and called it “eyewash”.
“If the SIR was so important to the TMC government, why did it allocate only one hour of discussion time on the subject, 30 minutes each for the government and the opposition, in the upcoming budget session of assembly?” he asked. PTI SMY NN
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