Trinamool Congress (TMC) national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee launched an attack on Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar Wednesday saying that “vote chori” is happening in electoral rolls, but Opposition parties like the Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party failed to stop it in other states.
Banerjee was speaking at a press briefing outside the Election Commission of India’s (ECI) office in Delhi after a TMC delegation led by him met Kumar and other Election Commissioners.
“Parties like the Congress, AAP couldn’t catch this in states like Maharashtra, Delhi, Haryana… If they had caught it, the BJP would have lost in these states,” the TMC leader said after the meeting. “I appeal to like-minded parties to catch the chori they are doing in voter rolls through software,” he said.
Banerjee alleged that Kumar started pointing fingers during the meeting, interrupted the TMC members, and lost his temper. “I replied: You are nominated and I am elected,” he said.
“I challenge him to come down and face the media. He is answerable to his masters and we are answerable to people of Bengal,” Banerjee added, while alleging that Gyanesh Kumar “was sent on a mission to destroy this institution (ECI) and our country.”
“I challenge Gyanesh Kumar to release the CCTV footage of our meeting that lasted for 2.5 hours. He was the only one who was speaking,” said Banerjee.
Banerjee said the delegation had gone with a set of 10-12 questions but got no answers from the ECI on most of them.
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He also appealed to the poll panel to release the logical discrepancy list during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in West Bengal, and said: “If it (theft) is not happening, then release the logical discrepancy list. In the earlier SIR, there was no such thing as suspicious list,” said Banerjee who claimed to have told Kumar that he was “weaponsing” electoral rolls.
Other members of the TMC delegation included MPs Derek O’Brien, Kalyan Banerjee, Mamata Thakur, Saket Gokhale, Ritabrata Banerjee, and Mohammed Nadimul Haque, and state ministers Pradip Mazumdar and Manas Bhunia.
