June 7, 2019
Mamata Banerjee bats for electoral reforms
Today, Trinamool Chairperson Mamata Banerjee chaired a review meeting for Hooghly district. She also addressed a press conference after the meeting.
Highlights of her speech:
A big movement took place on July 21, 1993, where 13 co-workers were killed and 100 injured by bullets. We had demanded that no voting be allowed without photo identity cards. Our movement was successful. This time out demands are two-fold.
I know how much money was spent they had spent for the elections. Some are saying it amounts to thousands of crores. I demand to know, where did all this money come from? All parties cannot spend so much money. This is corruption. Money was sent to different fake bank accounts. Money was transferred even using RTGS. They will not be able to cover up these things.
Let the power of the Election Commission be expanded. In Bangla, the Election Commission had created a situation which was worse than emergency. I have never seen such an election. Already 20 lakh EVMs cannot be found. Naturally the question arises, where are the machines? At many places, machines malfunctioned while polling was going on. The replacement machines were not tested. EVM machines were wrongly programmed, which needs to be investigated. A fact-finding committee needs to be set up.
We will stage a sit-in protest in front of the office of the Election Commission, and will request other Opposition parties to join us. How could pollsters tell beforehand so exactly that BJP would get 300 seats?
