Mamata Banerjee walks out of CEC meet, alleges insult over voter roll revision

New Delhi | Kolkata: West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee on Monday walked out of Nirvachan Sadan alleging that she was "insulted and humiliated" by chief election commissioner Gyanesh Kumar during her meeting with him. She also stepped up her attack on ECI over the special intensive revision of electoral rolls in the poll-bound state, reiterating her demand for an immediate halt to the exercise.

"We were insulted and humiliated. That is why we boycotted the meeting. He deliberately misbehaved with us. We went to him for justice. We did not get justice. He is a great liar. He gave a briefing after our queries. All are lies...a garbage of lies," Banerjee told the media outside the CEC's office.

"I have never seen such an election commissioner. He is extremely arrogant. I said that I respect your chair. I said that no chair is permanent for anyone. I told him I trust you, I have faith in you. But he refused to listen to us," she said.


ECI sources said: "Trinamool MLAs were openly using abusive and threatening language against the commission, especially against CEC. They were also threatening election officials."

ECI sources said CEC has responded to her queries and explained that rule of law shall prevail and anybody taking the law in their hands shall be dealt with strictly. It stressed that no pressure or interference should be exerted on booth-level officers and directed that the honorarium payable to them be released without delay, sources said.

Wearing black shawls as a mark of protest, Banerjee led a Trinamool delegation to meet Kumar, accompanied by MPs Abhishek Banerjee and Kalyan Banerjee and representatives from families who claimed to have been affected by SIR and those who said they were wrongly declared as dead in the electoral records.

Addressing the media after the meeting, Banerjee alleged large-scale and selective deletion of 58 lakh voters' names. She also questioned the timing and manner of SIR.

She claimed while the exercise was not carried out in BJP-ruled Assam, it was conducted in West Bengal and Tamil Nadu, leading to what she described as "mismatch and mismapping" in electoral rolls.

Raising concerns over documentation requirements, Banerjee said the revision process has placed an unreasonable burden on poor and migrant voters who were asked for documents such as birth certificates of parents. Citing her career as a four-time Union minister and seven-time MP, she said she had never witnessed an ECI functioning like this.