Union Minister and senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Sukanta Majumdar launched a scathing attack on the Trinamool Congress (TMC) on Sunday (Nov 23), asserting that the ruling party of West Bengal is actively opposing the Election Commission’s ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the state’s electoral rolls to shield what he claimed were “crores of unauthorised voters.”
Speaking to a large gathering during the BJP’s Parivartan Yatra in Mohanpur, Paschim Medinipur, Majumdar claimed that the SIR exercise, which is intended to purify the voter lists, had been “welcomed” by all “bonafide citizens,” suggesting that resistance was coming solely from the TMC leadership.
He directly questioned the TMC’s motives for opposition, alleging that numerous “unauthorised voters” had infiltrated the country and managed to obtain official documents, including ration cards and Aadhaar documents, with the explicit assistance of TMC leaders.
Majumdar warned that the necessary deletion of these names from the voter rolls had “rattled” the ruling party, and he confidently predicted that Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s vote bank had “drastically reduced,” assuring the crowd that “no one can save her party from a poll debacle” in the coming months, as the people of the state desired a ‘parivartan’ (change) that the BJP would deliver. He concluded his address by stating that Bengal’s residents would “reply democratically” to alleged atrocities committed by TMC leaders against BJP workers.
The Trinamool Congress leadership has countered the BJP’s narrative with equally fierce accusations, characterising the SIR as an exercise in “silent vote rigging.” Chief Minister and TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee has already voiced her strong criticism, labelling the SIR as “another form of NRC,” suggesting that it is a “chaotic, coercive” mechanism intended to delete voters from the electoral rolls systematically.
Banerjee has alleged that the Centre and the BJP are attempting to influence electoral outcomes through “notes, not votes,” and specifically flagged concerns that the SIR process is being misused to brand legitimate Bengali migrants as Bangladeshis.
Furthermore, the Chief Minister has questioned the overly rigid timeline set for the revision process and has raised serious alarms regarding the threats faced by booth-level officers during the enumeration and verification phases.
Reinforcing the BJP’s initial claim, BJP National Spokesperson Pradeep Bhandari took to X (formerly Twitter) to further criticize the Chief Minister, asserting that her political “vote bank survives on infiltrators,” which explains her “desperate” attempt to block the SIR. Bhandari’s post also included a video clip which he alleged “lays bare the entire illegal voter card and fake Aadhaar racket nurtured by Mamata Banerjee and her network.”
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