KOLKATA: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Friday began a sit-in protest against the deletion of around 64 lakh voters from the final list following the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in the state, ahead of crucial assembly polls scheduled in April.
The election is expected to be one of the toughest contests the Trinamool Congress (TMC) supremo has faced since her party came to power in 2011.
Launching the dharna at Metro Channel in Esplanade, the Banerjee attacked the BJP, accusing it and the Election Commission of India (ECI) of conspiring to “disenfranchise Bengali voters” and vowing to expose them.
Addressing the gathering from the protest stage, Banerjee said, “I will expose the BJP-ECI conspiracy to disenfranchise Bengali voters.”
Banerjee alleged that several voters had been wrongly marked as deceased in the post-SIR final rolls published by the national poll body on February 28. “I will present those voters who have been declared dead by the Election Commission at this protest site.”
Interestingly, the Metro Channel has long been Banerjee’s preferred venue for protests. She held demonstrations there during the Nandigram land acquisition movement against the then CPI(M)-led Left Front government around two decades ago.
In 2019, as chief minister, she staged a sit-in at the same site against CBI raids at the official residence of Rajeev Kumar, then Kolkata police commissioner, in connection with the Saradha chit fund scam. The TMC has since nominated Kumar, a retired IPS officer and former acting director general of police (DGP) of the state, for a Rajya Sabha seat from Bengal.
Friday's sit-in protests, which began at 2:15 pm, was announced earlier by TMC national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee, who accused the poll panel of carrying out a “politically motivated” exercise that could disenfranchise lakhs of legitimate voters.
The sit-in comes as the ruling party has intensified its protest against the SIR exercise — marked by allegations of wrongful deletions, stormy meetings and occasional violence — soon after the ECI released official figures showing 63.66 lakh names, or about 8.3% of the electorate, had been deleted since the process began on November 4 last year.
The voter base fell from about 7.66 crore to just over 7.04 crore. Apart from those deleted — classified by the ECI as absentees, shifted, dead and duplicate (ASDD) — another 60.06 lakh electors have been placed in the “under adjudication” category, meaning their eligibility will be determined through document scrutiny by judicial officers in the coming weeks.
Except for Uttar Pradesh, the final draft voter rolls have been released for the other states where the SIR process was conducted, including West Bengal, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Goa and Puducherry. According to ECI data, the highest deletions were in Gujarat at 13.4% (68.12 lakh), while Kerala recorded the lowest at 3.2% (8.97 lakh) compared with the previous rolls.
ECI sources said the number of voters marked “under adjudication” exceeds the winning margin in around 111 assembly seats based on results of the 2024 Lok Sabha polls in the state.
For instance, the percentage of deleted voters in about 41 seats dominated by minority communities in north and south Bengal is 5.61%, while the share of electors in the “under adjudication” category in these areas stands at 21.4%. In the last Lok Sabha polls, the Trinamool Congress had a lead margin in 29 assembly constituencies in these areas. On average, around 55,000 voters in these 41 seats have been placed under adjudication.
Following the publication of the final rolls, voters in the “under adjudication” category — more than 60 lakh — exceed the victory margins in several constituencies won by either the BJP or the Trinamool Congress.
The Trinamool Congress is particularly concerned about several constituencies in south Bengal, a stronghold of the ruling party, where its victory margins are smaller than the number of voters under adjudication. These include Khandaghosh, Burdwan South, Raina, Kalna, Memari, Burdwan North, Purbasthali South, Purbasthali North, Katwa, Ketugram, Mangalkote, Ausgram, Galsi, Pandabeswar, Durgapur East, Durgapur West, Raniganj and Jamuria.
“The agenda of the BJP and national poll panel is naked after marking such a huge number of 60 lakh voters who are mostly common poor and middle class people as ‘under adjudication’ group. The EC is hand-holding the BJP,” said Dr Sudipta Roy, a senior TMC MLA.