‘Sponsered’ fire in Kolkata slum to protect illegal voters, claims BJP

Kolkata: The BJP on Thursday claimed that the massive fire at Ghuni slum in New Town near Kolkata was "sponsored" to protect illegal voters amid the SIR of electoral rolls, a charge rejected by the ruling TMC and opposition Congress, PTI reported.

Officials said a fire broke out at a cluster of shanties near Eco Park in the New Town area on Wednesday evening, with no reports of casualties.

The blaze started in one of the shanties around 7.30 pm and quickly spread to adjoining houses. Around 20 fire tenders were pressed into service to douse the flames.

BJP leader and West Bengal co-in-charge Amit Malviya claimed that data from the ASD (Absent, Shifted, Dead) list of six booths under Ghuni village raised serious questions about the blaze that broke out on Wednesday evening.

"If there was ever any doubt that the massive fire in the Ghuni slum near Eco Park, New Town was sponsored, one only needs to look at the ASD list of the six booths under Ghuni village," Malviya said in a post on Thursday, asserting that around 850 individuals featured on the list, of whom nearly 650 were Muslims, and that about 450 Muslim individuals, mostly young voters, were marked "untraceable".

He alleged that the SIR exercise was exposing an "illegal vote bank" and claimed the state's ruling dispensation was "rattled" by the clean-up of electoral rolls.

"However, there is no turning back from a constitutional exercise," Malviya said, adding that West Bengal "deserves a chief minister who owes allegiance to its people, not to illegal Bangladeshi and Rohingya infiltrators."

A day earlier, soon after the fire broke out, Malviya had alleged that the blaze was linked to the SIR process.