KOLKATA: Promising to protect people’s welfare and position Bengal as an economic hub in the Trinamool Congress election manifesto, party supremo and Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Friday escalated her attack on the BJP and the Election Commission of India (ECI) over the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise, alleging that voter deletions were targetting “particularly one community”. She claimed that a “declared President’s Rule” was effectively being imposed in the state through the BJP’s actions.
Banerjee, alongside Abhishek Banerjee, the party’s national general secretary, said, “The supplementary SIR list of voters marked as ‘under adjudication’ has not yet been published today. I know that so far, 22 lakh out of 60 lakh adjudicated cases have been disposed of in the state. Ten lakh voters out of these 22 lakh have been rejected. They are mostly from Malda, Murshidabad, and North Dinajpur districts.” These districts are minority-dominated with solid vote banks for the Trinamool.
“This is being done targeting particularly one community. Names of Hindu voters and the Matua community have also been deleted during the SIR process. Words like ‘logical discrepancy’ have no meaning, I think,” she said.
“We have no words to condemn them and have gone everywhere—from the roads to the courts—to fight against the SIR process. First, they deleted 58 lakh voters and then another 60 lakh. It takes 15 to 20 days to dispose of 22 lakh cases out of the 60 lakh. Will it be possible to resolve the remaining issues within this period before the elections? They (BJP) had announced from their party office that more than one crore voters would be removed from the list,” she said.
“They have many plans. Modi and Amit Shah are threatening people over phone calls and sending their selected election observers to Bengal,” she alleged, adding, “Ten lakh jawans will come for elections. Where do we accommodate them, and who will cover their hotel expenses? Who will arrange their meals? How can we arrange LPG cylinders for them amid an acute cooking gas crisis? A huge number of policemen will have to be engaged for them. They will stop feeding the people of Bengal.”
The chief minister continued to slam the BJP, claiming, “The EC is not outside the BJP government at the Centre. The EC is their parrot. Bengal is their target. They don’t want Bengal to exist.”
On the current SIR procedures adopted, she said, “Every time the observers ask, we comply. This time, the elections are in this state. Do people from other states know Bengal? They don’t know the people here, the culture, the harmony, the booths, the subdivisions, or the festivals. Who will oversee all this? If anything happens after this, the BJP government will be responsible. The Commission is the BJP’s parrot.” She added, “Officers from outside do not know Bengal. They do not know the districts, the subdivisions, the people, the language, or the syncretic culture where all festivals are celebrated.”
In the party manifesto, Banerjee announced 10 election promises while targeting a fourth term in the upcoming April Assembly polls, focusing on welfare expansion, including a Rs 500 increase in women’s monthly aid to Rs 1,500–Rs 1,700, along with support for youth unemployment.
The manifesto outlined plans for agriculture with a Rs 30,000 crore budget, universal pucca housing and piped water, annual doorstep health camps, school upgrades, trade infrastructure, sustained pensions, and the creation of seven new districts—forming her governance blueprint.
She also promised to launch “Duare Chikitsa” (doorstep medical camps), stating, “We will start it in every booth; we will organise ‘Duare Chikitsa’ camps.” Additionally, she said thousands of schools would be modernised with e-learning facilities, and the government would create seven to eight new districts and municipalities.
“I will work to make Bengal the gateway of trade for Eastern India, with world-class logistics, ports, trade infrastructure, and a state-of-the-art Global Trade Centre,” Mamata said.