‘Onus on EC’: Bengal BJP begins ‘no SIR, no vote’ campaign
Times of India | 19 August 2025
Kolkata: A day after Election Commission announced that special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls would commence in West Bengal, state BJP began campaigning for "No SIR, No Vote".
"We are demanding ‘No SIR, No Vote'. The more Trinamool puts up hurdles in the way of SIR implementation, the more time it will take to complete the process. You can imagine what impact it will have on the forthcoming assembly polls," state leader of opposition Suvendu Adhikari said on Monday.
Pointing out that the state govt took charge on May 5, 2021, Adhikari said the present govt's tenure will end on May 4, 2026. "A newly elected govt will have to be formed by May 4, 2026. Otherwise, there are constitutional provisions for such a situation," he said.
Bengal BJP said that intensive revision or SIR was nothing new in the state. It was done in 2002 and nearly 26 lakh names were deleted during the exercise. "The Election Commission has minced no words to say that SIR will be rolled out at the right time in Bengal. It has also said that the revision of rolls is to clean the voter list," said a Bengal BJP neta.
"We don't want to boycott the vote and the responsibility of SIR is on Election Commission. If Trinamool tries to stall the process of SIR, that will be considered a total breakdown of the constitutional machinery. The custodians of the Constitution should then think where and when to interfere," Bengal BJP president Samik Bhattacharya said.
"It is quite clear that TMC wants an erroneous voters' list. They want dead voters and duplicate voters' names to be there as it helps them. They want names of illegal immigrants from Bangladesh to be there. Trinamool has facilitated their Aadhaar cards and EPICs. This is an easy ploy for them to use those voters multiple times during the phases," said Shankar Ghosh, BJP's chief whip in the assembly.
Bengal BJP has already submitted a list of 17 lakh "fake voters" with ECI and hinted at submitting more names.
Later on Monday, a team of BJP MLAs met governor CV Ananda Bose. "Haryana Police detained a total of 1,000 migrant workers for questioning. All of them are Bengali-speaking. However, 915 of them are Bangladeshi Muslims who speak Bengali. All of them were illegal infiltrators," Adhikari said while coming out of Raj Bhavan.