New Delhi: The meeting of a four-member Trinamool Congress delegation with Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar got heated Wednesday, with TMC leader Derek O’Brien alleging that they were asked to ‘get lost’.
Minutes after the meeting, the Election Commission (EC) put up a rather belligerent post on its official X handle. “ECI’s Straight-talk to Trinamool Congress. This time, the Elections in West Bengal would surely be: Fear-free, Violence-free, Intimidation-free, Inducement-free and without any Raid, Booth Jamming and Source Jamming,” it said.
The four-member delegation also comprised TMC leaders Sagarika Ghose, Saket Gokhale and Menaka Guruswamy. It sought to raise concerns over the deletion of around 27 lakh ‘under adjudication’ voters from the electoral rolls.
“I want to tell you what the Chief Election Commissioner told us within seven minutes of the meeting. ‘Get lost’. This is what the Chief Election Commissioner told the Trinamool Congress delegation. We are the second largest opposition party in Parliament,” O’Brien told reporters outside the EC headquarters.
He said that the meeting started at around 10:02 am and ended around seven or eight minutes past 10 am.
Meanwhile, EC officials told ThePrint that delegation members raised their voice with the CEC, after which they were requested to maintain decorum.
O’Brien told reporters that the delegation spoke about the nine letters written by Trinamool chief Mamata Banerjee to CEC Gyanesh Kumar, but had received “no acknowledgement, no reply”.
“We told him you (Kumar) had ignored all these nine letters. We gave him six examples about officials linked to BJP, who are part of the election process. We gave six examples, including the example of the chief electoral officer who was seen with BJP leaders in Nandigram,” he said.
“We told him you are transfering all these officials, how do you want to conduct free and fair elections? And then he said, ‘nikal jao yahan se’ (get out from here).”
In response to the ECI post on X, Gokhale alleged that this was a “lie”, posting, “This is a LIE. I was personally present at the meeting. NOTHING like this was said. All that CEC Gyanesh Kumar said to us was “GET LOST”. We challenge the ECI to release a transcript of the meeting. Else we will do it,” he posted.
TMC official handle on the social media platform also shot back, saying, “Our straight-talk to @ECISVEEP. This time, the Elections must be: Free from Delhi’s control. Free from political bias, Free from selective targeting, And free from double standards.”
The 27 lakh voters won’t be able to vote in this election after deletion of their names from the electoral rolls following adjudication by judicial officers.
“Voters whose names have been deleted by judicial officials can approach the appellate tribunal. If their names are cleared by the tribunal, they will be included in the voters’ list and can cast their votes later, but not in this election,” West Bengal Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Manoj Kumar Agarwal announced Monday.
The total number of electors in West Bengal, as of February 28, when the final electoral roll was published following the Special Intensive Revision (SIR), stood at 7.04 crore. This is a decline of 8.09 percent from the 7.66 crore voters who were registered before the SIR exercise began in the eastern state.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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