Kolkata, Feb 1 West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee will be meeting the Chief Election Commissioner (CEC), Gyanesh Kumar, at the Election Commission of India (ECI) headquarters in New Delhi on Monday.
She will be departing for the national capital on Sunday afternoon, with multiple programmes scheduled during her trip, primarily focusing on the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in the state.
Apart from that, she is also likely to interact with the top leaders of the opposition parties with an aim to create consensus against the revision exercise.
Party insiders said the Chief Minister deliberately chose this time for her visit to the national capital, considering that the top leaders of all opposition parties will be present there because of the ongoing Budget Session.
Although the date of her return to Kolkata is yet to be finalised, Trinamool Congress insiders said that she will return before February 5, considering the “vote on account” will be presented in the West Bengal Assembly on that day.
The budget session of the West Bengal Assembly is also crucial, and the treasury bench will move two important motions in the House.
One motion will be to condemn the role of central investigation agencies like the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in the state. The second motion will be to condemn the manner in which the ongoing SIR in the state is being conducted.
Already, indications are that the interaction session between the Chief Minister and the CEC would be quite stormy, as indicated by her extremely strongly worded letter to the CEC on Saturday.
In her letter, she had questioned the authority of special roll observers (SROs) and micro-observers, who, according to her, have been appointed only in West Bengal to review the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in the state.
According to the letter, the Chief Minister’s main contention is that the roles of SROs and micro-observers were not limited to overseeing the SIR process since they have also been designated as approving authorities.
In her letter to the CEC, Mamata Banerjee claimed that giving this authority to micro-observers had left the electoral registration officers (EROs) and assistant electoral registration officers (AEROs) “helpless, isolated and reduced to mere spectators”.
She claimed that this extra authority to observers and micro-observers was against the spirit of “democratic ethos, federalism, and fundamental rights”, guaranteed by the Indian Constitution.
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