"Spoke 55 mins, answered zero questions": Derek O'Brien slams Election Commission

New Delhi [India], November 29 (ANI): Trinamool Congress MP Derek O'Brien on Saturday launched an attack on the Election Commission of India, accusing it of dodging key questions raised by the TMC delegation during Friday's meeting on the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls and asking the poll panel to release the full transcript of the discussion.
Addressing a press conference, the Rajya Sabha MP claimed that the Commission spoke for nearly 55 minutes but failed to answer even one of the five specific questions put forward by the TMC team.
"At the end of the meeting (with the Election Commission), I said this on record, that you spoke for 50 or 55 minutes, but you have not answered one of our five questions... Why don't you (the Election Commission) release the transcript of yesterday's meeting? You are accusing an entire delegation of elected MPs of the All India Trinamool Congress under the chairmanship of Mamata Banerjee and the National General Secretary Abhishek Banerjee," he claimed.
O'Brien further claimed that the methodology being followed by the ECI is "leading to death after death". He claimed that the deaths among Booth Level Officers (BLOs) were due to intense pressure applied by the Election Commission.
He further stated, "We are saying as a concept, the SIR is correct, but the methodology being followed by the Election Commission of India is leading to death after death. Yesterday, the Election Commission of India told us, Why are you worried? Wait till the 9th of December... The BLOs (Booth Level Officer) are under pressure... Who is applying the pressure? It's the Election Commission."
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." According to the TMC MP, the delegation spoke uninterrupted for 40 minutes in the 2-hour meeting, and afterwards heard CEC Gyanesh Kumar.
"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)