Kolkata, 04 November (H.S.). The political confrontation in West Bengal over the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls intensified on Tuesday, the very day the exercise formally began. Hours after Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee led a massive protest accusing the Centre of attempting to remove genuine voters from the list, the BJP mounted a sharp counterattack.

Amit Malviya, BJP’s IT Cell chief and co-in-charge for West Bengal, alleged that Banerjee’s agitation was aimed at “shielding illegal infiltrators”. Posting on social media platform ‘X’, Malviya claimed that her “protect-the-infiltrators rally” was designed to safeguard unlawful voters who had inflated the electorate in the state.

He cited statistical concerns, asserting that while Bengal’s population has grown by about 31 percent between 2001 and the present, the number of registered voters has risen by nearly 67 percent in the same period — a disparity that, according to him, raises serious questions about the legitimacy of those additions.

Malviya claimed that the TMC’s politics now relies heavily on illegal immigrants and fraudulent voter registrations. He also recalled that Mamata Banerjee, during her early political career, had campaigned against alleged manipulation of the voter list under the Left regime, but is now opposing efforts by the Centre to curb cross-border infiltration.

He further alleged that unlawful, Urdu-speaking infiltrators involved in crime and trafficking have become the “captive vote bank” of the TMC. Drawing a controversial comparison, Malviya likened her rally to Maulana Bhashani’s “Long March”, which once demanded that parts of Northeast India and Bengal be merged with what was then East Pakistan (now Bangladesh).

According to Malviya, the TMC’s aggressive opposition stems from fear that the SIR process will expose fake voter entries and weaken its electoral standings. He asserted that the people of Bengal will no longer tolerate such “deception” and expressed confidence that the state would reclaim its lost dignity and democratic integrity.

Hindusthan Samachar / Satya Prakash Singh