West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said that there was a previous door attempt to implement special intensive amendment (SIR) of voter lists in Pol-bound Bihar, TMC said on Saturday that “BJP’s internal survey showed that the party would get only 46-49 seats in the state.”
“Why is this practice being done now? We have evidence to explain why this is being done now. This is because the latest internal survey of BJP for Bengal shows 46-49 seats for them if assembly elections are held. In their frustration to change this, they are doing so,” TMC Rajya Sabha leader Derek O’Brien said in a press briefing.
Mamta’s remarks on Sir being “Backdoor Entry for NRC”, he said: “This is a terrible step. Under the Nazis in 1935, people were going to provide ancestor pass, a proof of paper. Is this a new version of Nazi ancestors? Where do we go from here?”
The pole panel announced a special intensive amendment of the electoral rolls starting on Wednesday, which will end with the publication of the election role on 30 September before the assembly elections in November. Such a final amendment was in 2003.
The opposition has expressed concern about exercise to potentially disintegrated voters. The Congress said that the ECI was admitting that “everything with India’s electoral role is not well” but the amendment is called “worse than the disease”.
He said that India block parties will increase this issue inside and outside Parliament.
He said, “We will not wait for Parliament to begin. We may have coordination in the House, but we cannot wait for that long,” he said.
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In press briefing, TMC Rajya Sabha member Sagarika Ghosh said: “This is a very important issue for democracy and transparent elections. The BJP is a habit of misusing central agencies to target the opposition. We are seeing it again that through ECI, the BJP is targeting the opposition.”
TMC Rajya Sabha member Saket Gokhale said that the Modi government is taking “the right to vote for the people, and is bringing to the NRC using the Election Commission”.
“The purpose of this new practice is to manipulate the Bengal elections for the BJP and then repeat this model across India,” Gokhale said.
Gokhale BJP NRC (T) BJP Internal Survey Bengal (T) India Block Opposition (T) Electoral Roll Revision India (T) Indian Express (T) Indian Express News
