Plan to implement NRC under cover of Election Commission’s SIR: Mamata Banerjee | Kolkata

KOLKATA: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday targeted the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Election Commission of India over plans for the special intensive revision (SIR), saying a plan had been hatched to implement the National Register of Citizens (NRC) under the guise of SIR.

Banerjee also asked people to ensure that their names were in the electoral rolls and offered support to fight any effort to remove their names. “There is a plan going on to implement NRC in the name of SIR. There shouldn’t be a single person whose name is not there in the voters’ list. Everyone should enrol their name. If you find that names are being deleted, approach the authorities. We will help you,” Banerjee declared at Ghatal in West Midnapore on Tuesday.

The chief minister was visiting some of the flood-hit areas in Hooghly and West Midnapore. Heavy rain and the water released by the Damodar Valley Corporation have inundated large areas in some districts of south Bengal.

In Bihar, the draft electoral roll published on August 1 indicated that ECI had removed roughly 6.56 million names on account of deaths, permanent shifts and multiple enrolment, marking potentially the largest single deletion of such entries in the history of independent India.

Opposition parties have expressed concern at the exercise, which disregards many identity documents, and demanded a special discussion on the issue in Parliament.

At its hearing on July 29, the Supreme Court on Tuesday warned that it would “step in” if there was any mass exclusion of voters in poll-bound Bihar.

Banerjee said, ”This is entirely a planted game. The plan is the brainchild of the double-engine government with the help of the Election Commission of India. We will not accept and tolerate this. The plan is being hatched in Gujarat. It has to be foiled,” she added.

The poll panel in West Bengal has already asked all political parties to submit the names of booth level agents as a part of the preparation for the possible rollout of the SIR.

“On the direction of the ECI, we have written to all the political parties in the state to appoint booth level agents. We will send the list to the ECI. These steps are being taken as preparations for the SIR,” Manoj Kumar Agarwal, chief electoral officer of West Bengal (WBCEO) told the media last week.