KOLKATA, March 31: Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday accused the BJP of trying to include illegal voters from NDA-ruled Bihar, Rajasthan, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh in the electoral rolls of West Bengal to turn the poll outcome in favour of the saffron party.
She made the allegations at multiple election rallies in Paschim Medinipur district and in adjacent Bankura on a day she sent a strongly-worded letter to Chief Election Commissioner, Gyanesh Kumar, on the matter.
In the letter, she claimed the Form 6 applications of “not genuine residents of Bengal having no legitimate connection to the state”, are “illegal, unconstitutional and fundamentally undemocratic, reflecting mala fide intent and ill motive”.
This came less than 24 hours after TMC national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee met Chief Electoral Officer Manoj Agarwal in Kolkata on Monday and alleged that a large number of Form 6s were being submitted by the BJP to push outstation voters in the electoral rolls of poll-bound West Bengal.
“I was informed by Abhishek yesterday that he had to rush to the EC office in between his campaigns upon receiving information that nearly 30,000 forms were submitted in a single day to include fresh voters,” the TMC supremo said in Paschim Medinipur’s Chandrakona, in her first of the day’s poll rallies.
“The BJP is trying to include illegal voters from Bihar, Rajasthan, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh in the electoral rolls of Bengal. They are planning to bring outstation voters by train and get them to vote in the seats of Asansol and Kharagpur,” she alleged.
The day also saw clashes between TMC and BJP supporters outside the CEO office in Kolkata, where booth-level officers, perceived to be backed by the ruling Trinamool Congress, protested over alleged voter list manipulation by means of Form 6 submissions in bulk.
If the BJP tries to “squeeze in illegal voters from outside” in Bengal’s electoral rolls, people will resist”, Banerjee said at her second poll rally in Garbeta.
“It will not get a single vote because the people of Bengal know how the BJP implemented this trick in Bihar, Maharashtra and Delhi and got away with it because the opposition there failed to understand the ploy,” the TMC supremo said.
She later took to X to state that “while over 60 lakh genuine voters remain under adjudication and more than 200 lives have already been lost due to the flawed SIR process, the ECI is now suspiciously rushing to entertain these bulk fraudulent applications behind closed doors”.“This is not only illegal and against the orders of the Supreme Court, but a direct assault on free and fair elections in Bengal,” the CM added. (PTI)
