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Kolkata, Nov 21 (IANS) In an effort to maintain the momentum of the movement against the Election Commission of India (ECI) Special Intensive Amendment (SIR) in West Bengal, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee will address an anti-SIR rally in Bangaon in North 24 Parganas district on November 25.
After the rally, she will also take part in a protest march in Bangaon. This will be the second anti-SIR rally and protest march which will be led by the Chief Minister. The first rally was held in Kolkata on 4 November.
Trinamool Congress insiders said Bangaon has been chosen as the venue for the anti-SIR rally and protest march, given the huge number of people from the Matua community in those areas.
Trinamool Congress had already started campaigning that the names of people from the Matua community would be removed as a result of the SIR. The Matua are a backward class Hindu population who came as refugees from neighboring Bangladesh and settled in various districts of West Bengal, which have international borders with neighboring Bangladesh.
Their concentration is mainly in Nadia and North 24 Parganas districts. However, the state BJP leadership has assured the people of the Matua community that, apart from illegal Bangladeshi and Rohingya infiltrators who managed to get their names registered in the voter list, no one else needs to worry about the vetting exercise.
On Thursday, Mamata Banerjee wrote a letter to Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar asking him to stop the revision process.
In the letter, he claimed that the manner in which the process was imposed on the state’s electoral officials and citizens was “unplanned, chaotic and dangerous”.
On the same day, Leader of the Opposition (LOP) in the West Bengal Assembly Suvendu Adhikari also wrote to the CEC opposing the Chief Minister’s letter.
In its letter, the LOP claimed that CM Banerjee’s letter to the CEC was a desperate attempt to thwart the voter list purification drive through SIR, and the contents of her letter were politically motivated and factually incorrect.
–IANS
Source/UK