- Mamata Banerjee alleged torture of Bengalis by Delhi Police in the capital
- She planned to visit Banga Bhawan to assess the situation of West Bengal people
- Banerjee criticised treatment of Bengalis compared to treatment of Bengal officials
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Monday alleged the "torture" and "atrocities" of Bengalis in the national capital, hours before she was scheduled to lead a Trinamool Congress delegation to meet Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar over the contentious Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in the state.
Banerjee said she was heading to Banga Bhawan, the West Bengal government's guest house in the capital, to assess the situation of people from the state and to address what she described as excesses by the police.
"I am going to Banga Bhawan to see our people and the atrocities of the Delhi Police," she said. "When the Home Minister comes to Bengal, we give him the red carpet. But when we come to Delhi, you give us the black carpet. Please restrain yourself from the atrocities, from the torture of the Bengal people who have lost their lives. The people of Delhi don't know what's happening in Bengal. I just now got the information, and I didn't even change my clothes."
The Chief Minister's statements came amid a showdown over the ongoing SIR of electoral rolls in West Bengal, a process the Trinamool Congress alleges is biased, arbitrary, discriminatory and politically motivated.
Trinamool MP Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar was seen getting into a verbal altercation with Delhi Police officials outside her residence, where a police van stood blocking the entryway.
"Show me the order that you are blocking my house," said the Trinamool MP. "I will call the commissioner if you don't move from here," she added.
Other Trinamool MPs Saket Gokhale and Bapi Halder also rushed to the spot to intervene.
Later in the day, Banerjee was scheduled to lead a 15-member delegation of the Trinamool Congress to meet Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar. The delegation includes party's National General Secretary Abhishek Banerjee and other senior leaders.
In a post on X, the official account of the All India Trinamool Congress said: "Today, led by Smt. @MamataOfficial and Shri @abhishekaitc, a 15-member delegation will meet the Chief Election Commissioner to formally place on record our grave concerns over the biased, arbitrary, discriminatory, and politically motivated conduct of SIR in Bengal."
The party said the delegation would place "categorical demands" before the Commission and seek urgent corrective action. "Our repeated representations to @ECISVEEP have thus far been met with silence," the post read.
The meeting follows a series of formal objections raised by Banerjee to the Election Commission over the conduct of the SIR in West Bengal. A day earlier, she wrote directly to Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, alleging that the exercise had caused widespread public suffering and had severely eroded trust in democratic processes.
In her letter, Banerjee warned that the manner in which the SIR was being conducted had "inflicted immense inconvenience and agony to the people". She claimed that the process had resulted in "as many as 140 deaths" and alleged that it was being carried out "in blatant violation" of the Representation of the People Act and the rules framed under it.
The Election Commission is currently undertaking a nationwide Special Intensive Revision in 12 states and union territories, with the final electoral rolls scheduled to be published on February 7. The states and union territories covered by the exercise are Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Chhattisgarh, Goa, Gujarat, Kerala, Lakshadweep, Madhya Pradesh, Puducherry, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal.
