Mamata to begin stir against voter roll cuts, revives street-fighter politics ahead

Kolkata, March 5: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee will return to one of her most familiar political arenas — the streets — on Friday, beginning a dharna at Kolkata’s Metro Channel against what the TMC alleges are “arbitrary deletions” in the state’s revised electoral rolls following the SIR.
The sit-in protest, scheduled from 2 pm at the Esplanade Metro Channel, was announced by TMC national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee on Sunday, who accused the Election Commission of carrying out a politically motivated exercise that could disenfranchise lakhs of legitimate voters months ahead of the Assembly elections.
“She will announce our next line of action from the venue. We are against this SIR, in which legitimate voters have been deleted,” he had said.
The protest marks a dramatic political escalation by the ruling party just days after the Election Commission published the post-SIR electoral rolls, which have significantly redrawn the contours of the state’s electorate.
For Mamata Banerjee, the decision to take the battle to the streets is also a return to a political style that shaped her rise. Long before she became chief minister in 2011, the pavements of Kolkata, particularly the Metro Channel, served as the stage where Banerjee built her image as a relentless street fighter challenging the then-dominant Left Front. (PTI)