You are weaponising electoral rolls: Abhishek to CEC Gyanesh Kumar

The Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar has been assigned to destroy the Election Commission of India (ECI) and the Indian Constitution, alleged Abhishek Banerjee, national general secretary of Trinamul Congress.

A 10-member Trinamul Congress delegation met Mr Kumar at Nirvachan Sadan this afternoon.

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The members of the delegation were Rajya Sabha MPs, Saket Gokhale, Derek O’ Brien, Mamatabala Thakur, Ritabrata Banerjee, Nadimul Haque and Mr Kalyan Banerjee, Lok Sabha MP. The state ministers, namely, Chandrima Bhattacharya, Dr Manas Bhuniya and Pradip Mazumdar were also included in the delegation.

Mr Banerjee alleged: “Mr Kumar was secretary to the Union home minister Amit Shah and he has been appointed at the CEC to manipulate the voters’ list. Had the parties like Congress and AAP been alert, BJP would have lost the election battle in Maharashtra, Delhi, Haryana and Rajasthan. Chori is not happening in EVM. It’s happening in electoral rolls.”

He demanded that the ECI should publish the CCTV footage of the two-and-a-half-hour long discussion with the CEC so that the people could see that Mr Kumar was the lone speaker. Another Election Commissioner just spoke for 30 seconds. Mr Banerjee alleged that to avoid court cases by the opposition parties, the ECI is giving instructions in WhatsApp and not issuing notifications, flouting all norms. “The ECI is giving instructions to the officials in WhatsApp so that the opposition parties cannot move the court,” Mr Banerjee maintained.

Mr Banerjee demanded that the logical discrepancy list should be published. In earlier SIR there was no such thing as a suspicious list. “I clearly mentioned this to Gyanesh Kumar that you are weaponising electoral rolls,” Mr Banerjee said.

Mr Banerjee alleged that the allegations of infiltration had been made by the BJP after the saffron party lost the Assembly election in 2021 and its number of seats went down in 2024 Lok Sabha polls. “The names of 58 lakh voters have already been deleted; the ECI has failed to disclose how many of these deletions involve foreign nationals. Senior BJP leaders alleged that one crore Bangladeshi and Rohingyas were given shelter in Bengal for electoral advantage. Why has the ECI not issued show-cause notices or no taken action against such statements which directly pertain to the objectives of SIR,” he asked.

He said the ECI does not know that a private company Datamation Consultancy Pvt Ltd has been engaged by it to conduct knowledge, attitude and practice (KAP) surveys in certain Assembly constituencies in Bengal under the SVEEP programme. The company is a private entity having no statutory accountability under election law yet the electors are being asked to share sensitive personal information with it.

Mr Banerjee said the ECI is yet to take any decision as to whether the elderly people will not have to visit the camps to show their documents when there is a provision that polling personnel visit them during election.

Mr Banerjee maintained: “The people of Bengal will defeat the BJP with a thumping majority despite the deployment of agencies who will work in favour of the saffron party.”