"Election Commission not listening to objections, valid voters removed": BJD VP Prasanna Acharya

Bhubaneswar (Odisha) [India], October 29 (ANI): In the wake of Trinamool Congress (TMC) MPs holding a meeting with Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar, Biju Janata Dal (BJD) Vice President Prasanna Acharya alleged that valid voters have been deleted from the electoral rolls on the pretext of Special Intensive Revision (SIR) and expressed apprehension that a similar situation could arise in Odisha.
Speaking to ANI on Friday, Acharya said, "There have been a number of defects in the SIR. But the election commission is not prepared to listen to any objections, and many valid voters have been deleted from the voter list on the pretext of SIR... What happened in Bihar? What is happening in other states? We apprehend that it will also happen in Odisha. The West Bengal government has raised serious objections to the SIR. So there should be a free and fair revision of the entire list, not the way the Election Commission is doing it now."
Reacting to the TMC MPs' meeting with the Election Commission, Acharya emphasised that the EC should be fair and consider all grievances.
"TMC has also raised some valid points, and I think the Election Commission should be fair enough to listen to all the problems and try to solve them," he added.
Earlier on Friday, a delegation of 10 TMC MPs met with CEC Gyanesh Kumar to highlight issues arising from the ongoing SIR process.
According to TMC MP Derek O'Brien, the delegation submitted a list of 40 deceased individuals whose deaths were linked to the SIR exercise, stating that the EC "has blood on their hands." The meeting lasted two hours, during which the delegation spoke uninterrupted for 40 minutes before the CEC spoke.
"10 MPs from the All India Trinamool Congress met with the Chief Election Commissioner, Mr Kumar and his team. We first handed over to him a list of almost 40 dead because of the SIR process. We started the meeting by telling him that Mr Kumar and the Election Commission of India have blood on their hands," TMC MP Derek O'Brien said during a press conference after meeting ECI.
Apart from O'Brien, Rajya Sabha MPs Dola Sena, Saket Gokhale, Mamata Thakur, and Mahua Moitra were also present in the meeting and the press conference.
The TMC MP said that they raised atleast five questions during the meeting but "did not get an answer to any of them."
"We raised five questions on behalf of the All India Trinamool Congress. We did not get an answer to any of our five questions. That is the outline of what happened," he added.
Addressing a press conference, Mamata Thakur raised concerns over the exclusion of states such as Mizoram, Tripura, Arunachal Pradesh, and Nagaland from the SIR, questioning why only West Bengal was targeted.
"If infiltrators are there, then why are Mizoram, Tripura, Arunachal, and Nagaland not included (in the SIR process), and only West Bengal is included? They say they are not voters and torture Bengalis across states. People think they are not speaking Bangla, and brand them Bangladeshis," the TMC MP asked.
Raising doubts over the legitimacy of previous elections, Thakur added, "If this voter list is wrong, are all the other votes (in previous elections) not valid? If this is not a voter list, then that voter list is also not correct."While raising the issue of Booth Level Officers' (BLOs) deaths in West Bengal, she said that the ECI is "not accepting" that the deaths are due to the SIR.
"Third is, the Election Commission does not agree that BLOs are getting tortured. They are saying that they will work atleast this much. We have the list, 39 people, and when we were talking about a report, bringing the list to 40 with more than half of them naming the Election Commission in their suicide note," Mamata Thakur said.
Earlier, TMC claimed that a BLO working in Murshidabad died of cardiac arrest, marking the fourth such death in the state. (ANI)