The moment the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) was announced, the game began, and the picture, according to the All India Trinamool Congress (TMC), is ugly and unmistakable. In constituencies such as Natabari, Mathabhanga, Ashoknagar, and now Basirhat, voters allegedly began disappearing from electoral rolls even before the revision exercise has properly rolled out.
In Basirhat alone, the party flagged that the online roster shows a wholly blank sequence from serial number 859–892. “Names present in 2002 have simply vanished today,” claimed the TMC in a post on X (formerly Twitter). The party’s post warned that this reeks of “a deliberate, state-directed operation to erase voters.”
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TMC’s warning to authorities
“The right to vote is not a favour; it is a constitutional guarantee,” the post added, accusing the state government and central machinery of engineering an “industrial-scale voter cleansing” under the guise of SIR. If even one legitimate voter is struck off, the TMC warned, it will take its protest to the very doors of the Election Commission of India (ECI).
The exercise, announced by the ECI across 12 states and union territories, is meant to revise electoral rolls ahead of the upcoming 2026 assembly elections. But the TMC and other opposition parties allege that SIR stands for “Silent Invisible Rigging,” a term coined by TMC national general-secretary Abhishek Banerjee to warn against alleged voter deletion designed to favour the ruling party.
The post by the TMC further accused the “self-styled Jonobirodhi Zamindars in Delhi, aided by a pliant machinery,” of attempting to rob the people of Bengal of their electoral voice.
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What happens next
The party has demanded full transparency in roll revisions and pledged to mobilise citizens if names are found missing once the final rolls are published. With protests threatened in Delhi and demands for immediate action, the electoral battle in Bengal appears far from over, long before the first vote is cast.
