BJP not to allow polls in Bengal if SIR process ‘obstructed’, says state party chief

Kolkata, Jan 13 (PTI) West Bengal BJP president Samik Bhattacharyya on Tuesday issued a stern warning to the EC, stating that the party would not allow the upcoming elections to be held in the state, if the party's claims and objections regarding the published draft voters' list in the SIR were not honoured.

Bhattacharyya claimed that while BJP workers had carried out thorough booth-level scrutiny to identify residents and non-residents to ascertain the accuracy of the published rolls, and Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) and their deputies (AEROs) were refusing to accept their objections raised through the EC’s Form 7.

"If the SIR process ends in West Bengal in this manner, we will not allow elections to take place here. Make the SIR process smooth - this is our demand to the Election Commission (EC)," the state BJP chief said during a press conference here.

Earlier in the day, the BJP on its X handle alleged that officials in two districts of West Bengal refused to accept the EC’s Form 7, meant for citing objections against inclusion of the name of a person in electoral rolls or seeking deletion of self or any other person's names from the rolls on grounds of death or shifting.

This is likely the first time the BJP has publicly expressed dissatisfaction with the EC, while Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and her party have been regularly criticising the poll panel, accusing it of bias.

The BJP leader said that party workers were staging protests at several locations across the state as officials were allegedly claiming they had no instructions from higher authorities to accept objections.

He said that AEROs were refusing to accept Form 7 and were insisting that Form 6 (applications for new enrolment) be submitted only online, causing confusion and harassment of party workers.

A healthy and civilised society cannot allow such administrative failures to continue, he said.

Bhattacharyya accused the CM of making "misleading statements" regarding the alleged removal of 54 lakh voters from the electoral rolls.

He claimed that the state government and the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) did not want a peaceful SIR process and instead intended to conduct elections using a "flawed" voter list under an atmosphere of fear and intimidation.

The BJP leader said the party had repeatedly urged Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar to visit West Bengal to assess the ground situation.

Bhattacharyya suggested that the Commission visit districts such as Hooghly, Murshidabad, Birbhum and South 24 Parganas to observe what he described as the "Diamond Harbour model" of electoral malpractice.

Diamond Harbour is the Lok Sabha constituency of TMC national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee, considered number two in the party hierarchy after his aunt Mamata Banerjee.

"West Bengal is still unable to break free from the vote culture that Uttar Pradesh and Bihar have managed to overcome," Bhattacharyya said, without elaborating.

He asserted that the Election Commission must take full responsibility for the situation, and warned that the BJP would take necessary steps at the party level if the issues were not addressed. PTI BSM SMY NN