Mamata continues sit-in for second successive day over Bengal voter roll deletions
Kolkata (PTI): West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee continued her protest against alleged arbitrary deletions in the post-SIR electoral rolls for the second consecutive day on Saturday, after she spent the night at the sit-in site here.
Banerjee had begun the demonstration at Metro Channel in central Kolkata on Friday, accusing the Election Commission of conspiring with the BJP to “disenfranchise Bengal voters” ahead of the upcoming assembly elections.
The chief minister stayed overnight at the protest site, surrounded by senior Trinamool Congress leaders, legislators and party workers, turning the busy Esplanade stretch into a makeshift political camp.
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Addressing supporters on Friday afternoon, Banerjee alleged that large numbers of genuine voters were being removed from the electoral rolls under the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise.
The CM also reiterated her claim that several voters had been "wrongly marked as dead” and said she would present such individuals before the media and the Election Commission to expose what she described as an "attempt to manipulate the voter list to help the BJP in the upcoming assembly polls".
Senior TMC leaders and state ministers remained present at the venue, while party supporters gathered at the protest site in the morning.
The protest comes just days before the full bench of the Election Commission is scheduled to visit West Bengal, amid rising political tensions over the voter list revision ahead of the assembly polls.
According to official data released on February 28, as many as 63.66 lakh names — around 8.3 per cent of the electorate — have been deleted since the SIR process began in November last year, reducing the voter base from about 7.66 crore to just over 7.04 crore.
In addition, over 60.06 lakh electors have been placed under the “under adjudication” category, meaning their eligibility will be determined through legal scrutiny in the coming weeks, a process that could further reshape constituency-level electoral equations.
নাগরিকদের ভোটাধিকার,
— Mamata Banerjee (@MamataOfficial) March 6, 2026
এই আমাদের অঙ্গীকার!
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Explosion heard over Dubai airport followed by cloud of smoke
Dubai: An explosion was heard over Dubai International Airport on Saturday, followed by a cloud of smoke in the air, according to a witness who spoke to AFP, as Iran continued attacks across the Gulf region.
The flight-tracking website Flightradar24 showed several aircraft circling above the airport in what appeared to be a holding pattern.
Meanwhile, the Dubai Media Office said in a post on X that there had been “a minor incident resulting from the fall of debris after an interception.”
In the same post, authorities also denied reports circulating online about a direct strike on the airport.
Further details about the incident were not immediately available.
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