Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee continued her tirade against the “mischievous implementation” of special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Bengal “with a one-point agenda to help the BJP, asking the people to descend on the streets with kitchen tools and resist the “nefarious designs of the BJP Government” if a single name was deleted from the voters’ lists.
“They will take away the rights of mothers and sisters in the name of SIR and then they will bring police from Delhi during the election and intimidate the people of Bengal mothers and sisters. If your names are struck off, you have the kitchen tools in your hands, and your names are deleted. The women will fight in the front, and the men will be behind them,” Banerjee on Thursday thundered from an anti-SIR rally at Krishnagar in Nadia district.
“The people of Bihar could not understand the trick, so they could not retaliate but we will not spare you here, remember an injured tiger is more dangerous than a general one,” Banerjee said.
She warned of staging a mighty dharna (sit-in demonstration) “if a single name is deleted from the voters’ lists and asked the people, particularly women, to get prepared for a sustained struggle on the streets.
Continuing her diatribe against the BJP Government, particularly Union Home Minister Amit Shah, called him a dangerous person whose eyes emitted the “villainy” of Duryodhana and Duhshasana — the two anti-heroes of the epic Mahabharata.
Launching a scathing attack against Shah, she said, “he is a dangerous person, you can see it all in his watch them one is that of Duryodhana and the other is that of Duhshasana,” alleging that the SIR was being conducted to politically help the BJP.
“SIR is being implemented at his (directions) and is being used as a political weapon to reach advantage to the BJP in the (2026) Assembly elections otherwise where was the necessity to conduct SIR in two months whereas in 2002 it took two years to complete it,” she said warning, “I will not spare them so easily I am that kind of person who has risen up through street struggles I will sit on a dharna if the name of a single voter is deleted then I will sit on a dharna because I will not let anyone go to detention camps.”
She said that “this Home Minister can do anything to label all Bengalis as Bangladeshis and send them to detention camps. But we will not allow anyone to be driven out of Bengal. I ask the people to resist any move to send them to detention camps.”
Alleging that the Election Commission was sending a battery of officials from Delhi to help the BJP in Bengal, Banerjee said “there are some BJP-minded officers who have been sent to Bengal who are aligned with the BJP and are dominating the district magistrates … the people will never take this lying down … they will give a befitting reply to this kind of dirty plan.”
Attacking the BJP for using religion to divide and polarize the people before the elections. Referring to the recent mass recital of Bhagvad Gita in Kolkata, Banerjee said, “Dharma means that what holds and not that what breaks … but you are using it to divide the people … religion is in the hearts and to be practiced inside and is not to be used for political purposes that the BJP is doing.”
She also slammed the BJP for “trying to impose a particular food habit on the people.” She said, “We are Bengalis, we eat non-vegetarian people … we love fish … so why shall you force us to stop eating fish … it is a personal choice.”
