A virus called SIR is sweeping across West Bengal, sparking a panic unseen since COVID. Cooked up in a New Delhi lab and unleashed this June, the virus may not have set off alarms had it been released after the general elections last year or even early in 2025. Instead, now, notionally at least, SIR has killed seven people in West Bengal in ten days since it announced its arrival in the state. Bihar had its bout with the virus too. However, Biharis are a hardy lot and staved off an upheaval. But West Bengal has some comorbidities that make it perhaps the most vulnerable-to-SIR-chaos state in India. It also has the bad luck of its potential crisis managers turning the epidemic into an opportunity for profit.
That's as far as this attempt at sarcasm—or SIRcasm, if you will—should be allowed. The terror of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls is real and upending lives across West Bengal. A Constitutional process to periodically update the country's voters list is being used by the state's political parties to thrust voters into an existential crisis. All this, because of the Election Commission's shotgun decision to conduct the exercise—first in Bihar, four months before Assembly elections there, and then in West Bengal, five months ahead of the April polls. Why the EC did not begin the SIR after general elections ended in June last year or at the beginning of this year is a question that needs to be asked. And answered.
Meanwhile, the monster is out of the bottle in West Bengal and seven people have died, apparently driven to their deaths by the fear of the SIR. The ruling Trinamool Congress, the opposition BJP and the motley bunch of other parties in the state have whipped up such a panic that people without the right documents could be struck off the voters list, detained and even deported, death seems to them the only option.
NO VOTE TO SIR VS DDD
"Delete, detain, Deport" was BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari's slogan at the BJP rally on Tuesday in suburban Kolkata supporting SIR. The leader of Opposition in the state has always claimed that West Bengal's Muslim population is hugely inflated by infiltrators from Bangladesh and Rohingyas from Myanmar, welcomed into Bengal by Mamata Banerjee to shore up her vote bank. Adhikari has lately tweaked his battle cry: Indian Muslims have nothing to fear from SIR. But, he claimed, the SIR would delete one crore names from the voters' list.
Two crores, claimed Mamata Banerjee. The BJP plans to use the SIR to delete two crore names from the voters list, she said at the end of a mega march across Kolkata on Tuesday to protest the SIR. Mamata Banerjee held a copy of the Indian Constitution as she walked, borrowing a gesture trademarked by Rahul Gandhi in the last couple of years. His is a red Constitution. Hers was yellow and a first by Mamata. And a rare nod to Rahul Gandhi.
Mamata Banerjee's original slogan was "No SIR in Bengal" from the moment it was declared for Bihar. Her party leaders went to town, exhorting voters not to share documents with anyone. The TMC general secretary Abhishek Banerjee put his seal of approval on such pronouncements saying, if anyone comes asking for documents, tie them to a tree. Mamata Banerjee has since revised her "No SIR" slogan to "Will not allow deletion of a single legitimate voter's name." But the damage is done and the seed of uncertainty has been sown in the minds of the people. Are we legitimate Indian voters? Or are we not?
DEATH BY SIR
A day after the SIR was announced for West Bengal, Pradeep Kar, 57, took his own life in a Kolkata suburb. Soon after, a 95-year-old in Birbhum district reportedly took his own life. At least five other deaths have followed, reportedly suicides. But reports are coming in daily of deaths that may have been caused by a heart attack or some other ailment that families and neighbours are designating "death by SIR".
After Pradeep Kar's death, a purported suicide note was found near the body containing the acronym NRC or National Register of Citizens. His family has filed a police complaint blaming NRC for his death. Some kin, however, claimed Kar couldn't write. He was apparently not fully literate. And the fingers of his right hand were damaged, as if lopped off in an accident or because of a birth defect. The BJP is claiming the purported suicide note was not written by Pradeep Kar but "manufactured" later by Trinamool to create a panic over SIR.
The TMC accuses the BJP of starting it all, first with the threat of NRC, then the Citizenship Act or CAA and finally SIR—all of which, the party claims, are aimed at the state's Muslim population. The result is a toxic SIR-NRC-CAA cocktail created by the two parties that is costing lives and sanity.
COMORBIDITIES
What makes West Bengal especially vulnerable to chaos over SIR? Short answer: a deeply politicised population, severely polarised plus a Muslim population of 27 per cent as per the 2011 Census which some expect is today touching 35% thanks to Bangladeshi infiltrators. Net result: an explosive mix waiting for a spark.
Back in 2005, Mamata Banerjee had accused the CPI-M in Parliament of encouraging infiltration and enabling the addition of one crore infiltrators on the voter list. Today, the BJP accuses her of doing exactly the same. All political parties in West Bengal have played the politics of polarisation, a function perhaps of the fact that the state shares a 2217 km border with Bangladesh, large swathes unfenced. Ever since Partition in 1946, Independence and the Bangladeshi liberation war, there has been infiltration into West Bengal. After 1971, a steady stream is the norm with Muslims arriving in search of a living and Hindus fleeing religious persecution.
They arrive without documents. Political parties ensure they acquire some, like ration cards, voter cards and more recently the Aadhar. But none of these are proof of citizenship, not even Aadhar, forcing this population to live in a state of perpetual anxiety.
In this milieu, the block level officer (BLO) official arrives with the enumeration form and Mamata Banerjee's instructions ringing in their ears: that their job is to include voters, not exclude them, and to remember that they are state government employees, not the Election Commission's. The BLO is shepherded by a posse of flag-bearing block level agents (BLA), all political party workers tasked by their leader to enforce instructions. If rival BLAs show up, there could be an argument, a fracas. For the voter waiting to be enrolled, it's not a humdrum government procedure but a moment of reckoning. Fraught. Anything can happen.
As the SIR gets underway in such circumstances, a cloud of unease is settling upon West Bengal, which has an unenviable history of political violence. Once polls are announced, that violence becomes rampant. People get killed in political clashes and that violence continues through the campaign period, through voting day, on results day and for about a week or so after a new government is in place. So far, over SIR, the battle between political rivals has been verbal. But the pitch is rising. And with it is rising the question – will the SIR become the new flashpoint of yet another bloody election is West Bengal?
