KOLKATA: Trinamool Congress National General Secretary and Lok Sabha MP Abhishek Banerjee on Tuesday said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his cabinet should resign and the Lok Sabha dissolved if the Election Commission of India (ECI) admits there are irregularities in the voters' list.
"Even if I grant the ECI’s claim that there are irregularities in the voter list --this is the same list used in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections based on which the current Prime Minister and government were elected--then the entire Union Ministry must resign," he reiterated.
Abhishek Banerjee further said that if the ECI is correct, then steps should be taken to initiate criminal proceedings against the former Chief Election Commissioner, Rajiv Kumar, and file an FIR.
Banerjee said, “Because under Rajiv Kumar's vigilance and supervision, the 2024 Lok Sabha elections were conducted and over 240 BJP MPs were elected with the help of the same "irregular" rolls, the Prime Minister and all Union ministers must resign. Maharashtra, Jharkhand, and Haryana elections were also held using the same list.”
Kumar was the CEC during the 2024 Lok Sabha elections as well the Assembly polls in Maharashtra and Haryana last year, where the opposition parties alleged that BJP won all the elections by manipulating the voter lists with the help of the ECI.
Moreover, he questioned, “Why is the SIR (special intensive revision) being conducted forcefully, especially in Opposition-ruled states?"
Mentioning that Trinamool Congress Chairperson and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee was the first person to flag this issue on February 27 by revealing that a person with the same name and EPIC number is included in the voters' list in Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal, Abhishek Banerjee said that the Congress Party’s media conference proved conclusively that the same person voted in Varanasi and Karnataka on the same day.
Alleging that the ECI is working at the behest of the BJP, he noted, “The ECI is supposed to be a neutral body. If it is truly neutral, it should sit down with MPs. We are the people’s representatives, elected by over 20–25 lakh voters. Yet the ECI has been reduced to acting as the government’s representative. The BJP has turned every independent institution for its own gains.”
He also threatened that if an elector’s name from West Bengal is excluded from the voter lists, and the BJP thinks it can strip citizens of their rights and run the country as it pleases; the Trinamool Congress will respond in the same language.
“If even one name is removed, one lakh people will gherao the ECI. No BJP leader will be able to save them,” Banerjee declared.