West Bengal’s ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) on Monday accused chief election commissioner Ganesh Kumar of disrespecting women and shouting at the party delegation that met him and the election commissioners in Kolkata, escalating tensions between the two sides.
“Like every time, it was him [Kumar] Who did all the talking. After talking for a while, he suddenly became upset and said, “That’s you.” [TMC] I have moved the Supreme Court. He was screaming. He accused us of shouting,” said TMC leader and state minister Chandrima Bhattacharya.
It quoted Kumar as saying that the Special Intensive Review (SIR) has been completed in other states and he is helpless, as the Supreme Court is monitoring the process in West Bengal. “Is it a crime to move the Supreme Court? We have the right to move the court,” Bhattacharya said after the meeting. “he [Kumar] He was asking me not to scream. I told him that his attitude proves that he does not respect women. “For this reason, the names of female voters are deleted.”
There was no immediate response from the Election Commission of India (ECI) to Bhattacharya’s account of what happened at the meeting.
Earlier on Monday morning, TMC workers carried placards with ‘Back’ slogans and gathered black flags during Kumar’s visit to the Kalighat temple. TMC workers showed Kumar black flags and chanted comeback slogans after Kumar’s arrival in Kolkata on Sunday evening.
In a statement about the meeting with representatives of political parties, the ECI on Monday said they urged them to hold the Assembly elections in one or two phases, protect voters, and deploy Central Armed Police Forces (CAPF) to curb election violence. She added that Kumar assured them that the Election Commission of India would not leave any stone unturned to ensure fair, transparent and impartial elections.
Kumar and Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi, who are on a three-day visit to Kolkata, are holding a series of meetings to take stock of the election preparations.
Bharatiya Janata Party spokesman Sishir Bajoria said that they had asked the Election Commission of India to hold the elections in one phase or in two phases at most. “Holding elections in multiple stages does not help.”
ECI and TMC have been at loggerheads over the SIR. On February 24, the Supreme Court invoked its extraordinary powers under Article 142 of the Constitution to direct the IEC to continue publishing supplementary voter lists even after the notification of the final electoral list on February 28 to ensure that no eligible voter is disenfranchised ahead of the Assembly elections.
The court held that voters included in the supplemental lists would be treated as part of the final list, effectively neutralizing strict statutory timelines that might prevent the inclusion of voters whose verification is still pending. He authorized the Chief Justice of the Calcutta High Court to request additional judicial manpower from West Bengal and neighboring states like Jharkhand and Odisha to complete the adjudication of cases on “war footing”. More than 250 serving and retired district judges participated in deciding nearly five million claims and objections.
