Akhilesh meets Mamata; TMC, SP decide to work unitedly to fight BJP, keep distance from Congress
Kolkata, Mar 17: The Trinamool Congress and the Samajwadi Party will work unitedly to fight against the BJP nationally, senior SP leader Kiranmoy Nanda said after a meeting between supremos of the two parties, Mamata Banerjee and Akhilesh Yadav, on Friday.
Yadav, Nanda who is an SP national vice-president, and other leaders called on Banerjee at her residence in Kalighat here and they held an hour-long closed-door meeting.
"It has been decided that the TMC and the SP would work unitedly to fight the BJP. Both the parties would also maintain distance from the Congress," Nanda told PTI after the meeting.
Yadav said that his party is following a policy of maintaining distance from both the BJP and the Congress.
He told reporters that regional parties will chart their course of action in the days to come.
"We share a very cordial relationship with Mamata Banerjee. Naturally, the present political situation of the country was discussed during the meeting," he said.
When asked about the role of the Congress in the opposition front, Yadav said the grand old party has to decide this on its own.
"Regional parties are competent enough to decide their roles. the Congress has to decide its role. Nobody should take any step which might have any adverse impact (on fighting the BJP)," he said while adding there are several faces in the opposition camp who can become the prime minister.
The Trinamool Congress is yet to come out with any official statement on the meeting except a tweet sharing pictures of both the leaders greeting each other.
"Hon'ble President of @samajwadiparty Shri @yadavakhilesh called on our Hon'ble Chairperson Smt @MamataOfficial today, in Kolkata." the AITC tweeted.
Yadav had lent his party's support to the TMC during the 2021 West Bengal assembly poll, which was reciprocated by Banerjee when she campaigned for the former Uttar Pradesh chief minister during the 2022 election in that state.
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SIR in Gujarat: More than 17 lakh deceased voters found on electoral rolls
Ahmedabad (PTI): The ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls in Gujarat has revealed that more than 17 lakh deceased voters were still included in the existing voter list across the state, a release by the office of the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) has stated.
According to the release issued on Thursday, the SIR exercise started in Gujarat on November 4 with booth-level officers (BLOs) distributing enumeration forms in their designated areas.
The campaign will continue till December 11.
"In the last one month, enumeration forms have been distributed to more than five crore voters registered in the 2025 electoral roll. In most of the 33 districts, 100 per cent of the distribution has been completed. Work on digitising the returned forms is currently underway. So far, the digitisation work has been completed in 12 out of 182 assembly constituencies," it said.
These include Dhanera and Tharad of Banaskantha district, Limkheda and Dahod (ST) of Dahod district, Bayad of Aravalli district, Dhoraji, Jasdan and Gondal of Rajkot district, Keshod of Junagadh district, Mehmadabad of Kheda district, Khambhat of Anand district and Jalalpore of Navsari district.
Dang district is at the forefront in this work with 94.35 per cent digitisation of the counting forms, said the release.
"During this exercise, it was revealed that 17 lakh deceased voters were still included in the electoral roll across the state. More than 6.14 lakh voters were found absent from their addresses. It has been noticed that more than 30 lakh voters have permanently migrated," the release said.
BLOs found more than 3.25 lakh voters in the "repeated" category, which means that their names figured at more than one place, the release stated.
