Mamata Banerjee to address anti-SIR rally in Bengal’s Bangaon today
Kolkata: In an attempt to keep her party’s opposition to the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) floating, Trinamool Congress chief and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee will be addressing a rally against the poll panel’s exercise at Bangaon in North 24 Parganas district on Tuesday afternoon.
As per the schedule, she will first address a rally at Trikon Park in Bangaon later in the day. After that, she will lead a protest march at Bangaon.
This will be the second anti-SIR rally and protest march that the Chief Minister will lead.
The first rally was held in Kolkata on November 4.
The rally and protest march by the Chief Minister is being held just a day after Trinamool Congress general secretary and Lok Sabha member Abhishek Banerjee outlined the strategies for taking the anti-SIR movement to the national capital of New Delhi.
A 10-member team of Trinamool Congress Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha members was constituted to spearhead the anti-SIR movement in New Delhi and also take up the matter with top Election Commission of India officials at the poll panel’s headquarters in the national capital.
Trinamool Congress sources said that Bangaon has been chosen as the venue of the anti-SIR rally and protest march, considering the heavy concentration of people from the Matua community in those pockets.
Trinamool Congress had already started campaigning that the SIR would result in the deletion of the names of people from the Matua community.
Matuas are a Hindu population from the backward class coming as refugees from neighbouring Bangladesh and settling in different districts of West Bengal, which have international borders with the neighbouring country. Their concentrations are mainly in the Nadia and North 24 Parganas districts.
The state BJP leadership has, however, assured the people from the Matua community that, other than illegal Bangladeshi and Rohingya infiltrators who managed to get their names enrolled in the voter list, no one else is required to worry about the revision exercise.