‘Be careful when submitting nominations’: Mamata accuses EC of bias, targets BJP

Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee The recently appointed officials of the Election Commission have been assigned to reject nomination papers of their party candidates and urged them to exercise caution while filing nominations, it was claimed on Wednesday.Addressing three election rallies in the state, Banerjee also accused bjp Abusing central agencies and bringing in people from outside for political gain.“Everything has changed; there is a new setup here. The newly appointed officials of the Election Commission are entrusted with rejecting your nomination; so be careful while filing your nomination. Take a lawyer with you while filing your nomination,” Banerjee said while addressing a rally in Nannoor, Birbhum district, PTI reported.The West Bengal chief minister also appealed to voters, especially women, not to support the BJP.“They (BJP) are anti-women and that is why their names were removed from the SIR citing logical inconsistency,” she said. Mamata Banerjee claimed that ahead of the elections, the BJP was looking for bank account details of poor people and warning them not to share such information, claiming it could lead to misuse of their funds.The TMC chief alleged that the BJP was trying to bring in outsiders to influence the Bengal polls and said, “Until I come, the people of Delhi will not be able to take over Bengal.”The chief minister also responded Supreme CourtHer comments to SIR said she was “pleased” with them.Talking about the electoral roll revision, Banerjee said her government has approached the Supreme Court and has managed to restore around 2.2 million names so far, while around 1.8 million names are yet to be restored.She added that those whose names were removed would have to appeal to the courts at the government’s expense.Earlier in the day, the Supreme Court said the appeals court would hear appeals from individuals whose names were excluded from the electoral rolls, as well as appeals from electoral authorities challenging alleged erroneous inclusions.At the rally in Nanoor, where party leader Anubrata Mondal was absent, Banerjee alleged that Nobel laureate Amartya Sen’s land in Santinigaitan was being acquired, prompting her to intervene. She also urged people to defeat the BJP in elections so that they don’t have to queue in the future.Later, while addressing another rally in Purwan, the chief minister claimed that names of voters in several constituencies were being deleted en masse. She claimed that around 30,000 names were removed in Dinhata and nearly 40,000 in her own constituency Bhabanipur.Banerjee, however, claimed that these developments would not help the BJP win the elections and asked people to consider her as a candidate in all 294 assembly constituencies.