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Don’t trust Amit Shah, he will turn out to be a Mir Jafar: Mamata warns Modi
West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee alleged that the Election Commission’s Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls was a game plan of Union home minister Amit Shah
Kolkata: West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee launched an attack against Union home minister Amit Shah, saying that the Election Commission of India (ECI)’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, which is likely to be rolled out in the state anytime soon, was a game plan of Shah, and cautioned Prime Minister Narendra Modi not to trust him always.
“Their (BJP) leader holds a meeting and then announces that names of a few lakh voters would be deleted from West Bengal. The state has been hit by a natural calamity. It is the rainy season. The festive season is still continuing. Amidst this, how can SIR be rolled out within 15 days ? How can everyone enrol their names? What do they think? Do they want a BJP’s commission? Or a commission of democratic and civic rights? This is entirely a game plan of Shah. He is behaving like an acting-Prime Minister. The Prime Minister knows everything. I am sorry to say,” Banerjee said while speaking to reporters at the NSCBI airport in Kolkata.
“We can request the Prime Minister. Don’t trust Amit Shah always. One day he will turn out to be a bigger Mir Jafar. Be cautious. Morning shows the day,” Banerjee said while speaking to reporters at the NSCBI airport in Kolkataa,” she said.
This is not the first time that the Trinamool Congress (TMC) supremo has targeted Shah while sparing Modi. Earlier too, she had attacked Shah and labelled him as the acting-Prime Minister of the country.
“Don’t play dirty and nasty politics. I am the last person to tolerate this. I am not talking about the Prime Minister, but the ‘acting-Prime Minister’. Who is the ‘acting Prime Minister’ of this country? I don’t know. BJP can reply to this question,” she had said while speaking to the media in May this year.
Again, in June she said at the state secretariat: “Who is the nation’s Prime Minister? Is it Narendra Modi or Amit Shah? Modi ji is visiting other countries leaving everything to Shah. So why not declare him (Shah) as the prime minister? Practically he is running the country. He has demolished all the systems and is doing whatever the party is saying.”
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders on Wednesday hit back at Banerjee, saying that she was trying to play a game of divide-and-rule.
“She is trying to play a game of divide-and-rule. But unfortunately, this won’t be applicable to the BJP. She may label a leader as Mir Jafar and try to trigger an internal strife. But BJP is made of a different alloy. The party can’t be stopped like this nor by any violence. She may do whatever she wants but she will have to pay for her karma,” Rahul Sinha, senior BJP leader, told media persons.
The chief minister’s statements on SIR come on a day when a team of ECI officials led by deputy election commissioner Gyanesh Bharti has come down to West Bengal to take stock of the preparations ahead of the possible roll out of SIR in the eastern state. Assembly elections are scheduled in West Bengal in 2026.
“The deputy election commissioner and the state’s chief electoral officer, along with other senior poll panel officials in the state, held a series of meetings with district officials and those associated with the revision of electoral rolls to take stock of the preparations before the SIR could be rolled out in West Bengal,” said a senior poll panel official, who attended the meeting.
Several issues related to SIR, including preparations, appointments of booth level officers (BLOs), ongoing training programs, issues related to infrastructure etc. were discussed in the meetings. The district magistrates and electoral registration officers (EROs), who attended the meetings, flagged issues they were facing in their respective districts.
