Bengal SIR: Trinamool, BJP hold rallies on day one of 1st stage of revision exercise

Kolkata, Nov 4 (IANS) As the Special Intensive Revision exercise in West Bengal by the Election Commission of India (ECI) begins from Tuesday, the ruling Trinamool Congress and the opposition BJP will hold rallies in the state with the central theme of both being SIR.

The Trinamool Congress rally in Kolkata to oppose the SIR will be led by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and the party's General Secretary Abhishek Banerjee. The rally will start from 2.30 p.m. from the base of the statue of B.R. Ambedkar at Red Road in central Kolkata and will end in front of the ancestral residence of Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore at Jorasanko in North Kolkata.

The two main demands of the Trinamool Congress rally will be -- the name of a single genuine voter should not be deleted from the voters’ list after the SIR and BJP should stop creating an atmosphere of fear in the state in the name of SIR, the panic which has allegedly prompted some suicides and suicide attempts in the state.

On the other hand, the BJP’s rally led by Leader of Opposition in the West Bengal Assembly, Suvendu Adhikari, will be at Panihati in the North 24 Parganas district of West Bengal.

Incidentally, 57-year-old Pradeep Kar, a resident of Panihati, committed suicide last week, reportedly out of fear of the NRC. While Trinamool Congress had already conducted a rally at Panihati on this issue last week, the BJP had announced a counter-rally at the same place on Tuesday.

The BJP’s rally at Panihati on Tuesday is against the alleged attempts by the Trinamool Congress to spread misconceptions about SIR by unnecessarily linking it with the National Register of Citizens (NRC).

At the rally, Suvendu Adhikari is also expected to highlight how Trinamool Congress is politicising the SIR issue by linking any case of suicide or suicide attempt with SIR or NRC.

Since the beginning, Trinamool Congress has been opposing the SIR and claiming that the exercise was a ploy of the BJP and the Union government to slap the NRC in West Bengal.

On the other hand, the BJP has been claiming that the reason why the Trinamool Congress was opposing the SIR so vehemently was their fear that the names of their dedicated voter bank of illegal Bangladeshi and Rohingya infiltrators would be deleted from the voters’ list.

--IANS

src/dpb