Former West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday, September 23 has demanded the arrest of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar and fresh assembly elections in the state with the pre-SIR voter list, alleging that the BJP and the poll panel had “looted” the polls held earlier this year.
Her remarks were a response to the The Indian Express report that Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had red-flagged multiple issues, including deletion of names, in various states during the pan-India Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of voters’ list, triggering a massive political storm.
“It has now been proven that the BJP and the EC looted the West Bengal assembly polls,” Banerjee said in a Facebook live, thereafter reported by PTI and New Indian Express.
“There will be pan-India protests till Gyanesh Kumar remains CEC. He must be immediately arrested and put behind bars. The chair of the CEC is not for a person like him. It’s another fight for freedom, this time from the compromised CEC, and the BJP that has destroyed India,” she added.
The IE report claimed that Sandhu and Joshi had formally objected at least 14 times over the last 10 months to decisions and orders concerning SIR, including some allegedly taken without their knowledge. The Election Commission has, however, said that decisions relating to SIR were taken unanimously with the approval of all three commissioners.
“Re-election must be held in West Bengal with the old voter list,” she said, adding that INDIA bloc partners have spoken about the matter and will meet soon.
The remarks come days after the Election Commission froze the use of the ‘All India Trinamool Congress’ name and its reserved ‘twin flowers-and-grass’ symbol amid an escalating factional feud over control of the party.
The poll panel subsequently allotted separate interim identities to the two groups for the October 6 bypolls, with the Mamata faction getting ‘Mamata All India Trinamool Congress’ and the ‘football player’ symbol, while the rival faction led by Arup Roy was allotted ‘Democratic Trinamool Congress’ and the ‘envelope’ symbol.