West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has launched a protest against the alleged arbitrary deletion of millions of people from the electoral rolls during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls.
Banerjee claims that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Election Commission (EC) are conspiring to disenfranchise Bengali voters, and she has vowed to expose the plot.
During the protest, Trinamool Congress (TMC) national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee urged voters to boycott the BJP in the upcoming state assembly polls, saying that Bengalis with a sense of honor should not vote for the party.
The EC has published the first part of the final electoral roll for West Bengal, dropping 6.18 million names and keeping 70.46 million voters in the list after the SIR. Another six million people were flagged under a controversial "logical discrepancy" category, and their final status is currently being adjudicated by around 500 serving and former judicial officers.
The BJP has hit back at Banerjee, accusing her of holding the protest to protect infiltrators.
