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How can Bengal election be fair when so many genuine voters are left out, asks Shashi Panja

admin — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 20:54:00 +0000

This house came under attack on March 14. Did you ever think you would personally become a victim of political violence?

We knew that the BJP is a violent party, it’s politics is very shallow. But this was a new low. It was total hooliganism and they are proud about what they did. It is shocking and humiliating because I was in my own house, my political office, and I was putting up political banners. I was clearly overpowered. What surprises me most is the cowardice. You have a lady in front of you; you can’t come running with a brick and thump it in her stomach. They did it on a day when the Prime Minister was in the city.

You’re a senior leader in the party and three-time MLA and Minister as well. What do you think of the 2026 election and upcoming elections? And how do you think it is different from the 2021 election?

If the BJP, which says ‘hum log aarahe hain (we will come to power)’, is so confident of winning this election, then why did you actually have to do an SIR (Special Intensive Revision)? You do a routine intensive revision like you did in Assam. Why did you have to go so deep to disenfranchise so many people? That means what you say and what you believe is so different. If you’re so confident of winning, you don’t have to adopt these measures, which is again taking away rights of the people. They put me, a three-time elected MLA, under adjudication [after SIR citing logical discrepancies and cleared eventually] with what intent? I am a registered voter. Otherwise, why would I be elected or even stand for elections? If they could logically adjudicate me, just what have they done to others?

We can shout and scream, or we can go to court, but it takes time. Didi [Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee] went to court over SIR. People are getting harassed. But still you’re trying to cover up with a larger narrative to say, ‘Muslims hain, ghuspetiya hain’ (They are Muslims and infiltrators). You see, they [BJP-led Centre] have driven a different kind of narrative before. It was a divide between two languages, the Hindi heartland and a Bengali land. But this time it is different because we are going into an election with reduced voter strength. It is unconstitutional. Many do not know what their future is, if they will get to vote or not. Those who have been adjudicated and deleted are not even aware that they have got deleted.

If we take your constituency, Shyampukur in North Kolkata, about 44,000 voters have been deleted, do you think it is affecting the level playing field?

We all want free and fair elections. But where is fairness when you have got rid of so many legal voters? And regarding free elections, I mean, it’s so unfortunate. They say we do Muslim appeasement. But during Ram Navami, we saw people armed with swords, and Ram Ka Bhakti Geeti on DJ remixes. So, it is basically hyper-exhibitionism. The electorate here will not be like this.

Even if they delete voters, if they [BJP] can lose Ayodhya [in the 2024 Lok Sabha election], they can lose anywhere.

The Trinamool Congress has devised many women-centric schemes to cater to women voters. Can you elaborate on that?

Lakshmi Bhandar is a scheme with a financial incentive; it is hugely popular and has reached over 2.42 crores women. It’s her money. It’s her bank account. It’s a single bank account, not a joint account with someone. It gives financial literacy and ‘samman’ (respect). Critical gaps can be addressed with that money. Something that has been copied in multiple other States, including the BJP-ruled ones.

One of the campaigns that the BJP is highlighting is crimes against women and that women are unsafe in West Bengal. Now that the BJP has fielded the mother of the R.G. Kar victim [the doctor who was raped and murdered in the State-run hospital in 2024], what kind of political messaging is it?

I was on the ground because R.G. Kar (Hospital and Medical College) is not very far away from where I stay and also not far from my constituency. I am an alumnus of R.G. Kar. So, I have seen those days and nights when there was spontaneous outpouring of grief and sympathy for the victim. We faced all of it.

We also faced criticism towards us. We had condemned the incident. Who would want such a thing to happen? Nobody wants it. When the mother of the victim decided to step into electoral politics on BJP ticket, we have nothing to say. It’s her choice. Even when the incident happened, we did not evade our responsibilities, most of all the CM. Kolkata Police arrested the culprit. The CBI could not unearth anything more. It was a Supreme Court-monitored CBI investigation, and we have nothing to say.

Within a month of the incident, the Aparajita Bill [that prescribes death penalty for rape] was introduced and got cleared by the Vidhan Sabha, but till date it has not been converted into a law because it is awaiting approval from the President. Why is that?

The BJP is sheltering criminals who have committed crimes against women. They garlanded the rapists of Bilkis Bano [2002 Gujarat riots victim]; it is tragic that the mother of Abhaya [RG Kar victim] is expecting justice from this party. It is not about rape in my State or your State. Rape is rape. The BJP-ruled States have high numbers. We have to get our act together.

BJP is also fighting the elections on the issue of lack of industry and flight of capital. There is dissatisfaction among people on the ground about it. What are your views?

What investments have the Prime Minister brought on his various foreign trips? Nothing has come in. When Didi came to power in 2011, it was a very difficult time. By then, Bengal after the Left era was already branded as the place of militant unions, strikes, and major power cuts. We are trying to move past this era and change that impression. We have done multiple business summits here. It is not like industries are not here, there are. They are generating jobs. We will work on this further.

If you come to power for the fourth time in 2026, what will be the first thing your government will want to do?

There is a lot of technology and new innovations coming up. Mamata Banerjee has a projection for that, and a land bank has been identified for it. But predominantly we are an agrarian economy, and it is also an industry that yields employment. All over the country we are talking about unemployment, we are also grappling with the problem. If the Central government paid us the money that is due to us, maybe we could have expanded our programmes here. This is an economic “strangulation”.

We have stopped giving industrial incentives because people take from us and not much is gained from it. People will come because this is the gateway to East and South-East Asia; we are very well placed geographically. We will try to do better, we are not saying we are perfect.

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The SIR conundrum in West Bengal

admin — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 20:03:00 +0000

A voter checks his name in the list after the Election Commission published West Bengal’s post-SIR electoral rolls, in Kolkata, on Saturday, Feb. 28, 2026. File
| Photo Credit: PTI

The Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in West Bengal has finally ended barring a judicial adjudication of about 60 lakh electors as per the directions of the Supreme Court on February 20, 2026.

The electorate of West Bengal stood at 7.04 crore on February 28, 2026, reduced by 8.09% since the start of the revision process on October 27, 2025, when the number of voters in the State was 7.66 crore. Names of some more electors will be struck off the electoral rolls after the 501 judicial officers complete the process of adjudication, but for the people of West Bengal the process seems to be finally over.

For almost four months, the administration of West Bengal was on tenterhooks, trying to revise and update the electoral rolls. It took more than five lakh government officials including 80,681 BLOs (booth level officers) for each polling booth in the State to complete the process.

According to the Election Commission of India (ECI), the main objective of the SIR is to ensure inclusion of eligible electors and exclusion of those ineligible.

An updated and revised electoral roll forms the basis of elections in a democracy. The process was long due in West Bengal. So, the intent of poll body in updating and revising the voter list cannot be criticised, but the commission floundered in the manner the exercise was carried out over four months.

There was a rush to complete the process before the announcement for Assembly polls in West Bengal. This put not only officials involved in the process under huge stress but made the electorate of the State suffer. Millions of people, including the ailing elderly, were made to queue up at poorly organised SIR camps. There was little clarity on the grounds on which notices were being issued to voters to appear at the camps and what documents were required to prove someone as a legitimate voter.

The Supreme Court intervened on various occasions trying to streamline the process and even pointed at a ‘trust deficit’ between the State government and the poll panel before bringing in judicial officers to complete the last leg of the process.

The Trinamool Congress leadership not only opposed the SIR but tried to vitiate the process. It was a political move to rally the people against SIR and thereby blame the poll body and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government at the Centre for imposing an arduous and poorly executed exercise on the people.

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee made most of the SIR, wrote half-a-dozen letters to Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar and criticised the Commission and its officials in strongest words. Ms. Banerjee held several protest marches in the State, led a delegation of those who suffered due to the SIR to the EC headquarters, appeared in person before the Supreme Court, making quite a show before the State’s electorate.

The Trinamool Congress chairperson was able to score political points months ahead of the Assembly polls riding on the opposition of the SIR, even though some of her claims that over a hundred people had died due to SIR fears may not be entirely true.

The West Bengal BJP leadership, which has been demanding SIR on grounds of infiltration from the border with Bangladesh resulting in demographic change, seems a little disappointed with the outcome of the exercise. Contrary to the claims of BJP leaders that over a crore of names will be deleted, the SIR exercise has seen deletion of about 62 lakh names so far.

The SIR has busted many myths relating to the electorate and politics of West Bengal. The highest category of deletions was in the category of deceased voters, which accounted to 24 lakh names being struck off. The category of shifted voter accounted to 18 lakh removals and the deletions of absent voters who did not collect SIR enumeration forms was about 12 lakh. The majority of the names deleted under absent and shifted were migrant workers in West Bengal from other States. Such deletions were high in constituencies in an around Kolkata, which has a high population of migrants.

Matuas, a sect of Hindu refugees from Bangladesh, who have been migrating to the State for past several decades have faced the heat of SIR, since they lacked legacy data – names of forefathers in the 2002 voter list. The minority-dominated districts of Malda and Murshidabad account for almost 20% of the cases which are under judicial adjudication.

These indicators point out that neither the claim of the BJP that the voter list of the State is full of people infiltrating from across the border nor the fearmongering by Trinamool that lakhs of genuine voters will see their names deleted from electoral rolls is true.

Now that the SIR exercise is almost over, the poll body is likely to announce the dates of Assembly polls in the State in the next few days. With a sanitised and updated voter list, the Assembly election will have a better reflection of the mandate of the people.

Published – March 05, 2026 01:33 am IST

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