West Bengal minister Chandrima Bhattacharya on Monday accused Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar of shouting at her and disrespecting women when she raised the issue of deletion of voters in the SIR exercise during a meeting between the EC and a TMC delegation in Kolkata.
Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, whose dharna in central Kolkata over the SIR deletions entered its fourth day on Monday, alleged that the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) had adopted a threatening tone towards the state bureaucracy, stepping up the confrontation with the poll panel ahead of the announcement of the Assembly election dates.
“Like every time, it was he (Gyanesh Kumar) who did all the talking. After speaking for some time, he suddenly got offended and said that you had gone to the Supreme Court (against the SIR). He was shouting. And he accused us of shouting,” said Bhattacharya, who looked visibly distraught, after coming out of the meeting along with party colleagues Firhad Hakim and former DGP Rajeev Kumar.
“Is it a sin to go to the Supreme Court? It is our right, and therefore we went. I am a woman. He told me, ‘don’t shout’. I asked him how he could say that to me,” said Bhattacharya, who holds the portfolio of Minister of State for Finance in the Mamata Banerjee-led government.
“It shows he doesn’t have respect for women,” she added.
Last week, TMC MP Kalyan Banerjee alleged that Gyanesh Kumar had behaved “very badly” with Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee when she had gone to meet the Chief Election Commissioner and his two deputies in New Delhi in February.
Denying the allegation that the CEC shouted at her, an EC source said: “During the meeting, a leader from the TMC spoke in a raised voice, following which the CEC advised her to lower her tone and submit the demands and suggestions in a constructive manner.”
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Sources said Monday’s meeting between the EC and the three-member TMC delegation, intended to discuss the Special Interior Revision (SIR) process and upcoming election preparedness, quickly devolved into a heated exchange.
The TMC delegation presented a scathing critique of the current electoral process, claiming that over 63 lakh names have been deleted through a “systematic pattern of procedural violations.” They argued that the SIR process—the mechanism used to verify and update voter lists—has been weaponized to harass Indian citizens based on a narrative of “infiltrators” pushed by the opposition.
The party’s formal submission to the EC called for an immediate restoration of statutory authority to Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) and an end to “unlawful delegation of authority” to observers.
Specifically, the TMC demanded the reinstatement of all government-issued documents, including gram panchayat records and PMAY-G sanction letters, as valid proof of residence; an independent audit of technical portal failures and remote login credential usage; and a full explanation for the “gross disparity” between official objections filed and the millions of voters actually deleted.
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TMC Minister Firhad Hakim launched a direct attack on the BJP, accusing them of influencing the Commission’s policy to the detriment of the public. “The BJP has created a narrative that this is a land of Rohingyas and infiltrators,” Hakim said. “The Election Commission formulated its policy based on that. However, in this two-month process, you found no proof of that. Instead, you harassed Indian citizens… So many people are leaving their work to stand in lines just to prove their citizenship. This was a mistake by the Election Commission,” Hakim added.
Later at the site of TMC dharna against the SIR, the party supremo, Mamata Banerjee, hit out at him and warned that “false bravado” by constitutional authorities was not acceptable. “Today, I heard that officers were being threatened during a meeting – not just that action will be taken now, but apparently, he will take action even after May if his orders aren’t followed. I say, having courage is good, but false bravado is not,” she said.
“Poor Vanish Kumar, I feel bad for him. I am not insulting any official position. We use the word ‘vanish’ because dark-skinned people are ‘vanished’ in washing machines to make them white. That’s why I’m using it. Strong vanishing powder,” the chief minister added.
TMC general secretary Abhishek Banerjee, who is considered Number 2 in the party, intensified the attack on CEC, criticising his demeanour. “A man who lacks even the slightest sense of guilt or conscience—whose erratic decisions, misdeeds, injustices, and oppression have led to the deaths and suicides of nearly 200 people from Bengal. Instead of apologising to the people with folded hands, he is waving at journalists as if he has returned after conquering the world… We know that the names of nearly 6,070,000 living, breathing voters have been forcibly placed under adjudication so that they cannot cast their votes,” Banerjee said from the sit-in demonstration at Esplanade.
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He also questioned the CEC over his accommodation in a Kolkata hotel, which he termed as an “impossible coincidence”.
“Have you seen in which hotel he stayed yesterday. There are more than 5,000 hotels, big and small, in Kolkata… The babus from Delhi, from Amit Shah to the chief ministers of Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, the BJP national president, they stay at the same hotel, and the same room where the Chief Election Commissioner is staying. This cannot be just a coincidence,” Abhishek claimed.
Daal mein kuch kaala hai: Mamata on resignation of Bose
Kolkata: Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee raised suspicion over the “sudden removal” of CV Ananda Bose as West Bengal Governor just before the polls,
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“And the sudden removal of the Governor (Bose) also has a story behind it. Daal mein kuch kaala hai (There’s something fishy here). And I will definitely find it out. Lok Bhavan (Governor’s House) will now become BJP Bhavan. Money will be imported and exported from there. That’s why everything had to be changed a month before the elections,” the CM alleged.
Last Friday, Bose announced that he has resigned as Governor of West Bengal. This was followed by the Centre appointing Tamil Nadu Governor RN Ravi. —ENS
