KOLKATA: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Monday launched a blistering attack on the EC over deletions in the post-SIR rolls, alleging a "nexus" between the poll panel and the BJP to disenfranchise genuine voters, and help the saffron party in the upcoming assembly elections.
Banerjee, in her first reaction after the publication of West Bengal's post-Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls on February 28, claimed that the deletions had been carried out "deliberately by the BJP and the EC" to tilt the electoral balance in its favour in the polls.
"The Election Commission has deliberately deleted genuine voters. I am shocked. This is a very sad and inhumane state of affairs," she said.
The post-SIR rolls recorded 63.66 lakh deletions, 8.3 per cent of the electorate, reducing the voter base to a little over 7.04 crore.
More than 60.06 lakh voters have also been placed in the "under adjudication" category, subject to scrutiny in the coming weeks, marking the most sweeping electoral reset in the state since 2002.
Assembly elections are likely in the state in April.
Claiming that even her own Bhabanipur constituency had witnessed "massive deletions", Banerjee asserted that she would emerge victorious regardless of the scale of the revision.
"Despite massive deletions in my Bhabanipur constituency, I will win even if there is one voter left," she said at a public programme here.
The publication of the post-SIR rolls has triggered a political controversy in the state, with opposition parties alleging that lakhs of names were removed from the electoral list.
Banerjee asserted that the ruling BJP at the Centre was resorting to voter deletions, as it "could not win elections on its own merit".
"They cannot win elections because people won't vote for them. So they are deleting voters," the chief minister alleged.
Signalling an escalation of the TMC's agitation over the issue, Banerjee, also the party supremo, said she would sit on a dharna from March 6 against the "nexus between the EC and the BJP" to strike off genuine voters.
In a swipe at the BJP's ongoing 'Poriborton Yatra' in West Bengal, Banerjee said, "This will be the party's last yatra in Bengal.
