On a day, the Chief Electoral Officer of West Bengal assured that no names of legitimate voters will be deleted in the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, set to begin from November 4, TMC general secretary Abhishek Banerjee on Tuesday launched a sharp attack on the Election Commission (EC) and the BJP, calling the exercise a politically motivated “ploy” to exclude genuine voters ahead of the 2026 Assembly polls.

The Diamond Harbour MP, who is considered number two in the TMC, accused the EC of acting under political pressure and called the SIR “Silent Invisible Rigging” by the BJP.

Accusing the EC of turning into an “agency of the BJP”, he said, “…I am warning them, as a parliamentarian, that sooner or later the government will change. The BJP and (Union Home Minister) Amit Shah won’t stay, but the Constitution will.”

Asking Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar “not to run away from the country” when the government changes, Abhishek said, “Wherever you go, I will dig you out and bring you back. You will have to answer to the people.”

He argued that the exercise was designed not to include genuine voters but to “exclude them on political direction”.

“The BJP’s allied organisation has announced the SIR. Earlier, people used to elect the government. Now, this BJP government wants to select who will vote or not,” the TMC MP claimed at a press conference in Kolkata.

He also criticised the speed and scope of the exercise, noting that a similar summary revision in 2002 took two years to conclude, while the current drive is being pushed through in about two months across 12 states.

Warning against the deletion of the genuine voters’ names, he said the BJP leaders talk publicly about deleting “one crore names” from West Bengal electoral rolls and added: “If even a single legitimate voter’s name is removed, one lakh people from Bengal will surround the Election Commission office in Delhi in protest.”

The TMC leader also questioned the figures cited by the EC, asking for clarity on the composition of names removed elsewhere. “If 65 lakh people were removed from the voters’ list in Bihar, the EC must explain how many were Bangladeshis, how many Rohingyas, or citizens of other countries. They are confusing Bihar with Bengal; they are not the same,” he said.

Noting that the second phase of the SIR is being conducted in the Opposition-ruled states where elections are to be held soon, the TMC leader said, “You’ll notice that all the states going to polls, except Assam, are included. Among those, only Assam is ruled by the BJP.”

“If the current voters’ list is faulty, then the Prime Minister, I, and others elected on the same rolls should resign, and the Centre should dissolve the Lok Sabha,” he said.

Abhishek also hit out at the Centre on other issues, and accused it of diverting funds away from West Bengal to states such as Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, and failing to protect the state from “infiltration”.

He pointed to outcomes from Assam’s NRC exercise, saying the exclusion there nullified the BJP-led Centre’s claims about protecting Hindus, and argued the SIR was being used to stoke fear and confusion.

He also accused the EC of acting with bias in administrative transfers in Bengal, alleging a conflict of interest involving the Chief Election Commissioner. “He is a man on a mission, and that mission is to destroy the country,” he alleged.

Expressing confidence in TMC’s electoral prospects, he said: “Even if they conduct this SIR, we will increase our seat tally in 2026. This is my challenge to the BJP.”

–with PTI