Trinamool Congress national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee, who was part of a party delegation that met the Election Commission on Wednesday, said that the poll body did not clear their apprehensions regarding the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in West Bengal.
According to Banerjee, the party raised several concerns before the EC, including the 58 lakh deletions from the draft rolls and the summoning of over 1.36 crore voters for SIR hearing.
Banerjee said the concerns were not addressed and that the state's Chief Election Commissioner was "aggressive" during the meeting.
"When we started talking, he (CEC) started losing his temper...I said you are nominated, I am elected...If he has the guts, he should release the footage," he said.
The Lok Sabha MP also said that the party will launch legal fight if there are discrepancies in the final voter list.
"If it has discrepancies, why would we accept it. We would fight it legally," he said.
Banerjee claimed there was a "conspiracy to malign" West Bengal by raising the "bogey of infiltration," and challenged the poll panel to come out with the list of Bangladeshis and Rohingyas among the 58 lakh voters whose names have been deleted in the draft electoral roll.
"There is selective targeting, allegations of infiltration, which are leaked to malign West Bengal. We asked the CEC to come out with a list of how many Bangladeshis or Rohingyas have been found in West Bengal," he said.
He also questioned the EC's move to retroactively introduce a new category termed "logical discrepancies," summoning 1.36 crore voters for hearing on different grounds, including issues like mismatch of father's name, questionable age gap between parents and children, among others.
More than 58 lakh voters were deleted from the draft rolls published on December 16, after the initial phase of SIR in the state. Out of the 7.6 crore total voters, the EC has also raised speculation regarding the "genuineness" of about 1.36 crore voters, who have been called for hearing to verify their documents again.
Banerjee said they have urged the Commission that senior citizens, people with disabilities and those with comorbidities should not be called for the hearing, and should be provided a hearing at home.
Alleging that the electoral roll was being weaponised, he appealed to all like-minded parties to pay attention to the voter list, saying the "vote chori," pointed out by the Congress and opposition parties, is happening in the voter list and not through EVMs.
"I appeal to all, the vote-chori is happening in the voters' list, not through EVMs. You don't know what algorithm, software they are using to disenfranchise people. They are trying to weaponise the electoral roll," he said.
"Earlier, voters used to decide the government; now the government is deciding the voters," he said.
"The whole country should unite, every party should catch this vote-theft...This is why opposition parties lost Haryana, Delhi, Maharashtra and Bihar...People wanted to vote for them," he claimed, stressing that the opposition's fight is required not on media or social media, but on the ground.
"People are watching, if you put up a fight, the BJP won't win, because it will be the people who decide," he said.
The ten-member delegation of the TMC also included its leader in Rajya Sabha Derek O'Brien, MPs Saket Gokhale, Ritabrata Banerjee and Mamata Thakur, and ministers from West Bengal, including Manas Bhunia, Pradip Mazumdar and Chandrima Bhattacharya.
(With inputs from PTI)
