Mamata Banerjee slams CEC calls him 'arrogant', garbage of lies, after SIR meeting

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Monday launched a sharp attack on the Election Commission after a nearly 90-minute meeting with Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, alleging large-scale deletion of voters’ names during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise and accusing the poll panel of functioning at the behest of the BJP.

Coming out of the meeting, Banerjee told reporters that voters’ claims were being cancelled over minor spelling variations and title changes common in Bengal. “They first removed people’s names. The Election Commissioner is the BJP’s IT cell. You say this is a democracy?” she said.

Banerjee said names were being deleted even due to spelling differences, such as Banerjee and Bandyopadhyay, Mukherjee and Mukhopadhyay, or Chatterjee and Chattopadhyay.

“In Bengal, surnames change. People change their titles. They are cutting names because of title changes,” she said, adding that such differences were being flagged as “anomalies” to



strike names off the electoral rolls. She claimed that as many as 58 lakh voters had been removed without being given a hearing. “They didn’t even ask,” she said.

The chief minister alleged that booth-level officers (BLOs) were being pressurised during the exercise. “There is pressure on the BLOs,” she said.

Banerjee said she eventually stepped out of the meeting. “I boycotted and stepped out. This election commissioner is very arrogant. We have been misbehaved with. We have been humiliated,” she said.

Claiming that the delegation had come seeking justice, Banerjee said, “The CEC gave us a garbage of lies. We came here for justice but were given injustice.”

She alleged that the Commission justified the SIR by blaming Trinamool for raising the issue of duplicate voters, and accused the poll panel of violating Supreme Court verdicts and restricting media access near the ECI. “I have never seen this kind of Chief Election Commissioner,” Banerjee said.