Kolkata, Nov 10 (IANS) Trinamool Congress, on Monday, approached the Supreme Court with a petition against the ongoing special intensive revision (SIR) by the Election Commission of India (ECI) in West Bengal, which started in the state on November 4.

The petition at the apex court in the matter has been filed on behalf of Trinamool Congress by the party’s Lok Sabha member, Mala Roy, and the party’s Rajya Sabha member Dolan Sen.

The matter is likely to come up for hearing on Tuesday.

The petition was filed just hours after West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, while addressing the media persons at Siliguri in Darjeeling district, accused the Union Government and the ECI of conducting the SIR in West Bengal hurriedly.

She also alleged that the manner in which the revision exercise was rolled out has created panic among the people of West Bengal, which led to some suicides and suicide attempts.

An insider in the Trinamool Congress said that the main contention in the petition filed at the apex court is that the hurried manner in which the SIR had been rolled out in West Bengal has left every possibility of errors in the revision process, which might lead to the deletion of names of genuine leaders from the voter list.

In the petition, Trinamool Congress has also pleaded that the SIR exercise in West Bengal should be put on hold till the verdict of the apex court in the matter is pronounced. “Our main task is to protect the democratic right of the people of West Bengal, and hence approaching the apex court was our only option now,” the Trinamool Congress leader said.

Since the beginning, Trinamool Congress has been opposing the SIR, claiming that it was the plot of the BJP and the Union Government to slap the NRC in the state.

BJP, on the other hand, has claimed that Trinamool Congress’s opposition to the revision exercise was out of their fear that the names of illegal Bangladeshi and Rohingya voters would be deleted from the voter list.

–IANS

src/uk