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Kolkata, Nov 4 (IANS) As the special intensive vetting exercise by the Election Commission of India (ECI) begins in West Bengal from Tuesday, the ruling Trinamool Congress and the opposition BJP will hold rallies in the state with the central theme of SIR.
The Trinamool Congress rally in Kolkata to protest against SIR will be led by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and party general secretary Abhishek Banerjee. The rally will start at 2.30 pm from the base of BR Ambedkar’s statue on Red Road in central Kolkata and end in front of the ancestral residence of Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore at Jorasanko in North Kolkata.
The Trinamool Congress rally will have two main demands – not a single genuine voter’s name should be removed from the voter list after the SIR and the BJP should stop creating an atmosphere of fear in the state in the name of SIR, which has reportedly led to some suicides and suicide attempts in the state.
On the other hand, the BJP rally under the leadership of Leader of Opposition in West Bengal Assembly Suvendu Adhikari will be held in Panihati in North 24 Parganas district of West Bengal.
Incidentally, 57-year-old Pradeep Kar, a resident of Panihati, allegedly committed suicide last week due to fear of NRC. While Trinamool Congress had held a rally in Panihati last week on this issue, BJP had announced to hold a counter rally at the same place on Tuesday.
The BJP’s rally in Panihati on Tuesday is against Trinamool Congress’s alleged attempts to spread misconceptions about the SIR by unnecessarily linking it with the National Register of Citizens (NRC).
At the rally, Suvendu Adhikari will also highlight how Trinamool Congress is politicizing the SIR issue by linking any case of suicide or attempted suicide with SIR or NRC.
Right from the beginning, Trinamool Congress has been opposing the SIR and claiming that it was a ploy by the BJP and the Central government to implement NRC in West Bengal.
On the other hand, the BJP is claiming that the reason why the Trinamool Congress was so strongly opposing the SIR was because they feared that the names of their dedicated voter bank of illegal Bangladeshi and Rohingya infiltrators would be removed from the voter list.
–IANS
Source/DPB