Kolkata: Following the lead of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, North Bengal Development Minister Udayan Guha Monday began a hunger strike in Dinhata to protest what he described as the arbitrary deletion of names from the electoral rolls of West Bengal following the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise.
Guha alleged that the Election Commission of India (ECI) had removed the names of ordinary voters at the behest of the Bharatiya Janata Party. In protest, leaders and workers of the Trinamool Congress launched a mass hunger strike under his leadership in Dinhata.
The minister said the protest also aimed at opposing the large number of voter names placed in the “under adjudication” category due to what he described as “logical discrepancies”.
According to Guha, names of more than 2.37 lakh voters in Cooch Behar district have been kept in the under-adjudication category.
“The party leaders and workers are protesting in Kolkata under the leadership of Mamata Banerjee. The biased Election Commission, at the behest of the BJP, is excluding the names of common voters or keeping them in a pending list, causing mental anguish. They are not saying anything specific about when the pending list will be settled. In protest against this, we have started a mass hunger strike today in Dinhata,” Guha said.
Criticising both the BJP and the Election Commission, he added, “The Commission is responsible for conducting elections in a democratic country. It must remain completely impartial. I have seen many Election Commissions in my life, but I have never seen such a biased one. The Commission is working with an eye on what will benefit the BJP. But they do not realise that this is not Bihar, Odisha or Delhi. The people of Bengal are far more aware. They are also preparing to resist this conspiracy and remove the BJP from Bengal.”
The BJP has repeatedly claimed that Rohingyas and illegal infiltrators would be identified through the SIR process.
Responding to this, Guha said, “We demand that the voting rights of all those born here should be protected. If Rohingyas or infiltrators are found, exclude them and punish them if necessary. But it is being seen that where the BJP is weak, voter names are being excluded in a planned manner.”
When asked how long he intended to continue the hunger strike, Guha said, “I will continue as long as my body has breath.”
It may be recalled that Mamata Banerjee began a sit-in demonstration in Kolkata last Friday to protest what she described as the Election Commission’s arbitrary removal of voter names from the electoral rolls.
