TMC leader Abhishek Banerjee says EC didn't address party's concerns

New Delhi: Trinamool Congress leader Abhishek Banerjee on Wednesday alleged that the Election Commission has failed to address the party's concerns over the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in West Bengal, even as the poll panel cautioned the ruling party against intimidating officials involved in the exercise. Banerjee also said the party would "not accept" the final voter list if it contains "discrepancies".

"We would fight it legally," he told reporters after a 10-member TMC delegation met the full bench of the Election Commission to flag concerns over the SIR process in the state. He alleged that "vote chori" (vote theft) takes place through the voter list and not through EVMs, and claimed that states such as Maharashtra, Haryana and Bihar could have been won by opposition parties had they raised the issue more aggressively.

Banerjee said the delegation highlighted several objections related to the draft voter list, including the summoning of 1.36 crore voters for hearings.


He alleged that the poll panel did not assuage their apprehensions. Asked whether the party would accept the final electoral roll after completion of the SIR, he said: "If it has discrepancies, why would we accept it? We would fight it legally."

Banerjee challenged the Commission to disclose how many of the 58 lakh voters whose names have been deleted in the draft roll were identified as Bangladeshis or Rohingyas.

"There is selective targeting and allegations of infiltration being leaked to malign West Bengal. We asked the CEC to release a list of how many Bangladeshis or Rohingyas have been found in the state," he said.

He also questioned what he called the EC's move to retroactively introduce a new category of "logical discrepancies", under which 1.36 crore voters have been summoned for hearings on grounds such as mismatch in father's name, questionable age gap between parents and children, among others.

Meanwhile, sources in the EC said the West Bengal government should immediately release the enhanced honorarium approved by the Commission for booth-level officers (BLOs).