Kolkata: Hundreds of Congress, SUCI and AIDWA supporters took to the streets in separate protests on Friday demanding the resignation of chief election commissioner Gyanesh Kumar and legal action against him over alleged irregularities in the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls.Led by state Congress president Subhankar Sarkar, party workers staged a demonstration in the College Street area. The protesters marched towards the CEO’s office but were stopped near Central Metro station on BB Ganguly Street. They raised slogans against the CEC and burnt Kumar’s effigy.The SUCI rally, attended by more than 1,000 people, called for an immediate halt to the SIR exercise and restoration of the names of 13 crore voters who were allegedly deleted from electoral rolls across the country. The protesters also demanded that corporation elections be held only after the excluded names were restored.The procession began at Subodh Mullick Square and moved along S N Banerjee Road towards Esplanade. Police stopped the rally near Lenin statue, where SUCI central committee member Shankar Ghosh addressed the gathering and an effigy of Kumar was burnt. A four-member delegation led by former MLA and state secretariat member Tarun Naskar later met the additional chief electoral officer and submitted their demands.Separately, AIDWA members marched from Esplanade towards the office of West Bengal chief electoral officer, seeking restoration of names they alleged had been wrongly deleted during SIR. CPM neta Meenakshi Mukherjee accused the election authorities of disenfranchising voters and demanded Kumar’s resignation and legal proceedings against him.
