CM Mamata Banerjee
NEW DELHI: West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Monday strongly criticised Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar, calling him “arrogant” and a “liar” after meeting him at the Election Commission headquarters in Delhi. The meeting came amid the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in West Bengal, which Banerjee and her party have described as biased and discriminatory.Coming out of the Election Commission office, Banerjee said: “I am very sad. I have been involved in politics in Delhi for a very long time. I was a minister 4 times and an MP 7 times. I have never seen such an Election Commissioner who is so arrogant, who is such a liar. I told him that I respect your chair because no chair is permanent for anyone. One day you have to go… Why Bengal is being targeted. Elections are a festival in a democracy, but you deleted the names of 58 lakh people and did not allow them to defend themselves.” Banerjee arrived in Delhi on Sunday with a 15-member Trinamool Congress delegation, including party MPs Abhishek Banerjee and Kalyan Banerjee, along with families affected by the SIR exercise. She had earlier criticised the heavy police deployment outside Banga Bhawan, where she was scheduled to hold a press conference, and warned that such “threats cannot continue.”Addressing the treatment of people from Bengal, she said: “Please restrain yourself from the atrocities, from the torture of the Bengal people who have lost their lives. When the home minister comes to Bengal, we give him the red carpet. But when we come to Delhi, you give us the black carpet.”The Trinamool Congress delegation formally raised concerns about what the party described as the “biased, arbitrary, discriminatory, and politically motivated” conduct of the SIR process. The nationwide exercise, currently underway in 12 states and union territories, is scheduled to conclude with the publication of the final electoral rolls on February 7.
