Mamata to begin sit-in on Friday against voter roll deletions ahead of Bengal polls

Ahead of the West Bengal assembly elections, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee will start a sit-in here on Friday to protest against the alleged arbitrary deletions in the post-SIR electoral rolls in the state. The protest marks a dramatic political escalation by the ruling party just days after the Election Commission published the post-SIR electoral rolls, which have significantly redrawn the contours of the states electorate.

Ahead of the West Bengal assembly elections, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee will start a sit-in here on Friday to protest against the alleged arbitrary deletions in the post-SIR electoral rolls in the state. The protest comes just two days before the proposed visit of the full bench of the Election Commission to the state. The sit-in, scheduled from 2 pm at the Esplanade Metro Channel in central Kolkata, was announced by TMC national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee on Sunday. He had accused the Election Commission of carrying out a ''politically motivated'' exercise that could disenfranchise lakhs of legitimate voters months ahead of the assembly elections. The protest marks a dramatic political escalation by the ruling party just days after the Election Commission published the post-SIR electoral rolls, which have significantly redrawn the contours of the state's electorate. According to official data released on February 28, 63.66 lakh names, around 8.3 per cent of the electorate, have been deleted since the SIR process began in November last year, reducing the voter base from about 7.66 crore to just over 7.04 crore. In addition, over 60.06 lakh electors have been placed under the ''under adjudication'' category, meaning their eligibility will be determined through legal scrutiny in the coming weeks, a process that could further reshape constituency-level electoral equations. TMC leaders alleged that minority voters, migrant workers and economically marginalised sections have been disproportionately affected by the deletions. Abhishek Banerjee had escalated the attack on the Election Commission, alleging that the ''target of deleting over one crore voters was decided even before the exercise began''. He had said the TMC supremo would announce the party's next line of action from the protest site. ''We are against this Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls, in which legitimate voters have been deleted,'' he had said.

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