Kolkata: Leader of the Opposition in the West Bengal Assembly, Suvendu Adhikari, on Sunday termed Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s allegations over the ongoing SIR in the state as “baseless and exaggerated”, and accused her of trying to derail the electoral roll revision exercise for political reasons.
In a post on X, Adhikari also said he has written to Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, and claimed that the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls was “exposing the rot in the voter lists – bogus entries, duplicates, and infiltrators that have been nurtured under the TMC’s watch for years”.
The BJP leader alleged that the SIR exercise was “damaging the TMC’s electoral prospects”, and that’s why the CM was resorting to hysteria.
He further alleged that the SIR exercise was affecting the ruling TMC’s electoral prospects. “This is damaging their electoral prospects, which is why she is resorting to hysteria,” he added.
Sharing details of the letter on X, Adhikari said he had written to the Chief Election Commissioner “strongly countering the exaggerated allegations” made by Banerjee in her letter dated January 10, 2026. Calling her concerns “pure fiction”, he claimed the revision exercise was bringing to light “fake voters, deceased voters and illegal infiltrators”.
“The ECI drive is throwing the spotlight on the TMC’s dirty secrets. It is clear that Mamata Banerjee is panicking because the SIR is a death knell for her 2026 ambitions,” Adhikari stated.
The controversy follows Banerjee’s letter to the Chief Election Commissioner earlier this month, in which she raised serious objections to the conduct of the SIR exercise in West Bengal.
In her January 3 letter, the Chief Minister alleged that Election Commission officials had misused IT systems, claiming voter names were deleted from backend systems without proper authorization.
Banerjee had questioned who sanctioned such actions and under what legal authority they were carried out, asserting that the Election Commission must be held accountable for any “illegal, arbitrary or biased” activities under its supervision.
She also criticised the ECI for what she described as a lack of clarity on the objectives, procedures and timelines of the SIR. “Although the exercise is described as time-bound, there are no clearly defined, transparent or uniformly applicable timelines,” she wrote, adding that different states were following varying criteria.
In her letter, Banerjee further expressed concern over instructions being issued through informal channels.
“Shockingly, critical instructions are being issued almost daily, often via informal channels such as WhatsApp and text messages. No proper written notifications, circulars or statutory orders are being issued for an exercise of such constitutional significance,” she stated.
The Election Commission of India has maintained that the SIR exercise is aimed at updating and cleaning electoral rolls to ensure transparency and credibility in the voting process. The issue has intensified political tensions in West Bengal ahead of the 2026 Assembly elections.
