The Election Commission (EC) on Friday began training Booth Level Officers (BLOs) across West Bengal for the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, even as the Trinamool Congress (TMC) prepared a parallel voter-assistance operation and accused authorities of deliberate deletions in some booths.
ECI officials said the first phase of training focused on the mobile application BLOs will use for on-the-ground verification and distribution of enumeration forms.
“BLOs will be trained to operate the application, identify acceptable documents and explain procedures to voters,” a senior ECI official said.
The commission also moved to stabilise online services: after heavy traffic threatened the old portal, the ECI launched a new website to let voters search 2002 SIR lists without crashes.
Trinamool Congress announced they will set-up anchal-wise (Zone-wise) help desks from November 4 till December 4 (for SIR). Party general secretary Abhishek Banerjee during a closed-door virtual meeting, told party’s state functionaries that not a single BLO should be left “unattended for even a minute.”
He directed district-level Booth Level Agents (BLA-1s) to appoint BLA-2s to accompany BLOs during door-to-door verification and act as “shadow companions” to prevent any unfair deletions.
Banerjee announced that from November 4 the TMC will set up 6,200 voter-assistance camps across 2,861 municipal wards and 3,345 gram panchayats. Each camp, he said, will be equipped with laptops, printers and Wi-Fi and will operate from 9 am to 5 pm for a month to help people check names, submit claims and objections, and report irregularities.
The party has also instructed MPs and MLAs to form “war rooms” in each of the state’s 294 assembly constituencies to coordinate responses, with each war room staffed by 15 workers handling on-ground monitoring and data entry.
“On one hand BJP wants to divide and humiliate people in the name of SIR and NRC, while AITC workers will help people ensuring no one’s name is deleted. I will myself be on the streets for the next few months,” Banerjee said.
“This is our acid test,” Abhishek told party insiders, “If even one eligible voter’s name is removed, one lakh people from Bengal will hold a dharna outside the Election Commission office in New Delhi,” Banerjee warned, reiterating his earlier statement made this week.
He reiterated the TMC’s contention that the SIR, which the party calls “Silent Invisible Rigging”, is a political tool aimed at disenfranchising minorities and others ahead of the 2026 Assembly polls. The party claimed early discrepancies in North 24 Parganas, Nadia and Cooch Behar, saying hundreds of names visible in 2002 lists were now missing. “We have to be with the people of Bongaon, Ranaghat. Just like in Assam where we saw lakhs of Hindus were left out – in Bengal due to SIR a lot of people will face difficulties. So AITC workers must stand firm with them and provide all help,” he said.
He said the party would continue to pursue every democratic and legal avenue to ensure no eligible voter is disenfranchised.
Banerjee said the party’s Booth and Territorial Electoral Review Systems (BERS and TERS) had already been activated to prevent manipulation during the revision. “Knowing what the BJP is capable of, we had already set up BERS and TERS. Now it’s time to put them into full action,” he said.
The meeting, also addressed by TMC state president Subrata Bakshi, was convened to chalk out the party’s strategy for the voter list revision and coordinate the campaign across all districts, blocks and booths.
That charge prompted an immediate exchange on social media between the TMC and the West Bengal CEO’s office. The party posted that voters were “disappearing” from online rolls in several booths and called the pattern “a deliberate, state-directed operation to erase voters.” The CEO’s office responded on X, citing the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960, and said district election officers in North 24 Parganas and Cooch Behar had been asked for reports. The TMC accused the commission of deflecting responsibility saying, “The fact that instead of clear answers, the EC has chosen to respond with tweets, passing responsibility to district magistrates, a deflection strategy reminiscent of the Bihar voter list row.”
— with PTI