Mamata claims BJP govt creating 'restive atmosphere' in Bengal; blames CEC for TMC's poll defeat

KOLKATA: Former Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Friday accused West Bengal's four-month-old BJP government of creating a "restive atmosphere" in the state and trained her guns on Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar for her party's defeat in April Assembly polls held earlier this year.

Banerjee, who has repeatedly accused the Election Commission of being partisan, alleged that votes were looted in the Bihar, Haryana, and Madhya Pradesh assembly polls too. She also alleged that names of voters were deleted purposely to ensure the TMC's defeat in the assembly polls.

Names of about six lakh voters were deleted in the SIR in each of the constituencies where we won by a lakh votes in the 2021 elections. Over a period of one year before the 2026 election, Kumar and the masterminds engineered vote loot by illegally using software," she said at the launch of a new social media channel.

Terming CEC Kumar a 'daku' (dacoit), Banerjee demanded his immediate removal from the post.

At a joint press conference with INDIA bloc leaders on September 30 in New Delhi, she had repeatedly raised the issue of "vote theft" in Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, Bihar and West Bengal and expressed concerns over alleged electoral manipulation during the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.

On Friday, she accused the BJP government in West Bengal of having created a "restive atmosphere in the state".

"In just four months of this government, people are suffering atrocities at the hands of the marauding gangs," the former chief minister alleged.

Alleging that the police have turned into conduits of the ruling dispensation, she said, "It's true that they have to listen to the ruling party to some extent, but there has to be a limit."

Banerjee also reiterated her oft-repeated accusation that some outsiders owing allegiance to the ruling party were fomenting trouble in West Bengal. The Suvendu Adhikari-led BJP government was depriving people of benefits of various schemes like Annapurna Bhandar as well as Oikyoshree, Yuva and other allowances introduced by the previous TMC dispensation, she alleged.

"Even women are not being spared. Everyone is living in fear," Banerjee said.

Stating that Bengal has always led the country, be it in the struggle for Independence or the cultural renaissance, she asked why those who matter in society are not standing for the people. "If they think they can hide their faces in time of crisis, then they must remember people will not forget this," Banerjee said.

She also claimed that the ED, CBI and police were misused to cause a rupture in the Trinamool Congress.

The Trinamool Congress suffered a split following the West Bengal assembly elections in April. The EC has frozen its 'twin flower on grass' poll symbol as one group got the 'Mamata Trinamool Congress' and the other 'Democratic Trinamool Congress'.