‘CEC is being blackmailed, BJP holds his files’: Mamata’s explosive charge

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday launched a sharp attack on the Election Commission over the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, alleging large-scale and illegal deletion of voters’ names. Questioning the transparency of the process, she asked why receipts were not being issued during SIR hearings and why the list of deleted names had not been made public.

Raising serious concerns, Mamata claimed names were being deleted in bulk using artificial intelligence and that even living people were being marked as dead. She questioned whether those whose names were removed had the right to know the reasons and asked how hearings of several lakh pending cases would be completed with limited time. She also alleged that people from Jharkhand and Bihar could be brought in to vote, while pointing to instances of mass voter registrations linked to a senior leader’s family member in Barrackpore.

Escalating her criticism, the Chief Minister questioned why micro-observers were deployed only in West Bengal and not in Assam, and alleged the Election Commission was behaving like “Superman.” Calling the situation a conspiracy of “One Nation, One Party,” she claimed even eminent personalities like Amartya Sen were called for hearings. Mamata directed officials to file FIRs wherever bulk voter-related papers were found and urged BDOs and SDOs not to act out of fear, reports said.