West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee launched a scathing attack on the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Election Commission (EC) on Tuesday, accusing them of conspiring to manipulate the state's voter list through the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise.Leading a massive protest march in Kolkata, Banerjee warned that the Narendra Modi government at the Centre would face certain downfall if even a single eligible voter's name is wrongfully deleted from the electoral rollsThe Trinamool Congress (TMC) supremo labeled the voter list revision as a form of "silent, invisible rigging" ahead of the 2026 Assembly elections.She alleged that the BJP intends to remove as many as two crore names from the voter lists in West Bengal to secure an unfair advantageDuring her address to the protestors, Banerjee challenged the BJP's rhetoric on illegal immigration, questioning the party's actions in its own-ruled states. "How many Rohingyas did you remove from Bihar? Did you manage to get the numbers of Bangladeshis and Rohingya removed from Bihar?" she questioned, implying that the BJP uses the issue selectively for political gain She criticized the BJP for branding Bengali-speaking migrant workers in other states as "Bangladeshis" and "Rohingyas".The Chief Minister asserted that the SIR process was being rushed in opposition-ruled states like West Bengal, Kerala, and Tamil Nadu, while BJP-ruled states were not being subjected to the same scrutiny She argued that a similar exercise in 2002 tooThe protest rally, which saw a massive turnout of TMC supporters and leaders, including Abhishek Banerjee, marked a significant escalation in the party's confrontation with the Centre and the Election Commission over the voter list revision. The TMC has framed the SIR exercise as an attack on Bengalis and a "Bangla-Birodhi" (anti-Bengal) move The party also claimed that the fear and uncertainty surrounding the SIR have led to several suicides in the state, a claim vehemently highlighted by Abhishek Banerjee during the rally.The BJP, on the other hand, has defended the SIR, with leaders like Suvendu Adhikari demanding the removal of "lakhs of Rohingya infiltrators" from the state's voter list and terming Banerjee's protest as an effort to protect them.This clash comes as the door-to-door enumeration process for the SIR began in West Bengal and several other states on Tuesday, with the final electoral roll scheduled to be published in February 2026
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