Kolkata, 22 November (IANS). Trinamool Congress has been continuously opposing the Special Intensive Review (SIR) of the Election Commission of India (ECI) in West Bengal. In this sequence, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee will address an anti-SIR rally in Bangaon of North 24 Parganas district on 25 November.
Mamata Banerjee will also participate in a protest march in Bongaon after the rally. This will be the second anti-SIR rally and protest march which will be led by the Chief Minister. The first rally was held in Kolkata on 4 November.
Trinamool Congress insiders said that Bongaon has been chosen as the venue for the anti-SIR rally and protest march because these areas have a large number of people from the Matua community.
Trinamool Congress had already started campaigning that names of people from Matua community would be removed from the list due to SIR. The Matuas are a backward class Hindu population who have come as refugees from neighboring Bangladesh and are settling in various districts of West Bengal, which share international borders with neighboring Bangladesh.
Their concentration is mainly in Nadia and North 24 Parganas districts. However, the state BJP leadership has assured the people of the Matua community that apart from illegal Bangladeshi and Rohingya infiltrators who have registered their names in the voter list, no one needs to worry about the amendment process.
On Thursday, Mamata Banerjee wrote a letter to Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar requesting to postpone the amendment process.
In the letter he claimed that the manner in which the process has been imposed on election officials and citizens of the state is “unplanned, chaotic and dangerous”.
On the same day, Leader of the Opposition (LOP) in the West Bengal Assembly, Subhendu Adhikari, also wrote to the CEC opposing the Chief Minister’s letter.
In his letter, the opposition leader claimed that CM Banerjee’s letter to the Chief Election Commissioner was a desperate attempt to thwart the voter list purification drive through SIR and the contents of her letter were politically motivated and factually incorrect.
–IANS
MS/DSc