Stepping up her attack on the special intensive revision (SIR) of voter list in the State, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday led a protest march in Kolkata and asserted that she would ensure the fall of the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government at the Centre if a single eligible voter was omitted from the electoral rolls.
“If one legitimate person is removed from the voter list, we will make sure to dismantle the BJP government at Centre,” the Trinamool Congress chairperson told a gathering after marching from Red Road to Jorasanko Thakurbari in north Kolkata
Accusing the BJP and the Election Commission (EC) of using the SIR as a political tool to intimidate voters, Ms. Banerjee said the BJP wanted to come to power by removing legitimate voters from the list. “These people think they will remove two crore names and deport people to Bangladesh, or move them to detention camps and throw them out of the country to capture power,” she said.
The Chief Minister’s march came on the day when the door-to-door enumeration for SIR began in the State and officials at the CEO office said 16 lakh enumeration forms were distributed. She was joined by senior leaders of the party during the march who included party general secretary Abhishek Banerjee.
Raising questions on the necessity of a hurriedly drawn out SIR, the Trinamool Congress chief asked, “Today, after all these years of independence, do we still have to prove that we are Indians?”
Ms. Banerjee said the BJP government was elected in 2024 on the same voter list which the BJP claimed was full of illegal voters. “How did you win the 2024 Lok Sabha elections? Which voter list did you follow? If the list is faulty then your government is also faulty,” she added.
“Why this rush?”
During her hour-long speech, the Chief Minister targeted Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, and mockingly called “kursi babu”. “In 2002, Bengal’s last SIR took two years to complete. Why this rush to finish it in a month now? Just to make Modi babu and Amit Shah happy?” she said.
The march by the Chief Minister on the streets of Kolkata comes almost three months after Ms. Banerjee had hit the streets on July 16, 2025 raising the instances of targeting of migrant workers from West Bengal in BJP-ruled States.
During her speech, she also targeted the BJP for calling everyone Bangladeshi and said the saffron party was saying that all Bangladeshis and Rohingya would be removed from Bengal. “How many Rohingya did you remove from Bihar? Did you manage to get the numbers of Bangladeshis and Rohingya removed from Bihar?” she asked.
Mr. Banerjee raised the issue of alleged suicides, which, the party claimed, had been triggered by fears of the SIR.
“The seven persons who committed suicide, all their names were included in the voter rolls and then removed….These seven lost their lives although their names were on the list and were later removed,” he said. Mr. Banerjee, while seeking permission from the party chairperson, said the Trinamool would go to Delhi to protest against the SIR and “show the might of Bengal to the entire country.”
