Sparks fly over Form 7: Didi highlights seizure of car with documents to flag 'manipulation' of SIR
Telegraph | 14 January 2026
Mamata Banerjee and Samik Bhattacharya on Tuesday attacked the Election Commission over Form 7, used to delete names from the voter list or object to the addition of names, in the middle of the special intensive revision (SIR) of the electoral roll.
State BJP president Bhattacharya alleged that booth-level officers (BLOs) and others engaged in the SIR process on behalf of the commission were not allowing the booth-level agents (BLAs) to delete names or object to the addition of names of "illegitimate" electors by using Form 7.
The chief minister accused the BJP of deleting names or objecting to the addition of names of genuine electors using Form 7.
Mamata claimed the BJP's ploy was exposed when a car carrying thousands of filled-in Form 7 were intercepted in Bankura on Tuesday, while Bhattacharya said if the commission did not properly conduct the SIR, there would be no Assembly elections in the state this summer.
Mamata alleged that the commission was compromised under chief election commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar (accused by many in the national Opposition of carrying out political orders of Union home minister Amit Shah), while Bhattacharya hinted that vast sections of the BLOs — state government employees carrying out the exercise on behalf of Nirvachan Sadan — were obedient towards the Trinamool Congress.
On Tuesday, around 4,000 filled-in SIR Form 7 were recovered from the car with an alleged BJP leader at Khatra in Bankura district. Showing pictures of the haul in the boot of the car from her phone at a news conference in Nabanna, the state secretariat, Mamata said a dangerous conspiracy by the BJP — with the EC in cahoots — to sabotage democracy in Bengal had been revealed.
"This is the current reality. This is how the conspiracy to remove names is being carried out," she said.
Mamata said the 54 lakh names deleted from the draft rolls were picked unilaterally and by misusing officials and AI-powered tools of the BJP.
"The BJP's AI software is responsible for the name mismatch in SIR data.... They disproportionately deleted names of women, with changed surnames post marriage," she alleged.
Women electors — half the state's electorate — have been an area of major support for Trinamool in recent elections.
Asserting that the so-called logical discrepancy was not part of the original SIR process and was only an afterthought, Mamata said the "BJP-commission nexus" had plans for the removal of another 1-1.3 crore names from the final rolls.
"They will release the final roll full of (deliberate) errors... and announce the elections immediately so that the problems remain unaddressed," she said. "I have information that a commandant from Fort William is working for the Bengal SIR... working for the BJP."
Her party, in statements on X, said: "We have received alarming reports of BJP leaders, party members, and affiliated Booth Level Agents storming the offices of SDOs and DMs as well as exerting undue pressure on EROs and AEROs to force the bulk submission of Form 7 for mass deletion of voters. Individuals are reportedly being brought in from states like Bihar and Jharkhand, with vehicles loaded with thousands of such forms for submission in one go."
In the X post, Trinamool tagged the commission and demanded action.
Police sources in Bankura said of the five people in the car going from Taldangra towards Khatra, three had escaped, but the driver and another man were captured and were currently being interrogated. One of them, said the sources, was a BLO (albeit with a "BJP background") who was taking the forms for submission in a subdivisional office.
Trinamool said one of the men being interrogated by the police is Prabir Ghosh, husband of Jhuma Ghosh, the BJP's former mandal president of the Bibarda gram panchayat in Taldangra. The ruling party has alleged all five are BJP leaders or workers.
Trinamool's Ranibandh MLA Jyotsna Mandi said the haul exposed the BJP’s desperation in the clearest possible terms.
The BJP's Bhattacharya demanded that CEC Gyanesh Kumar visit Bengal immediately, questioning the sanctity of the ongoing SIR over the "non-acceptance" of Form 7 to lodge complaints against suspicious entries.
“Neither the BLOs nor their seniors, such as electoral registration officers or their assistants, have been accepting Form 7 from our party functionaries. The Election Commission has to take responsibility, as we want a clean and fair electoral roll from the poll panel, without which there will be no elections in Bengal,” Bhattacharya said.
The commission has set a January 15 deadline to lodge complaints about suspicious voters through Form 7.
Since Monday, the BJP has been complaining against EC officials in various districts, alleging that they are not accepting Form 7, purportedly saying that there is no order to do so. Since Tuesday morning, BJP workers and leaders have been protesting at various offices in North 24-Parganas, Hooghly, Birbhum, Malda, Murshidabad, and North Dinajpur (all of which have substantial minority populations), demanding that the officials accept Form 7.
Bhattacharya also alleged that the commission officials were not accepting Form 6, used to enlist new electors, either. “Officials in the districts said that Form 6 should be submitted online. Why will they not accept Form 6 physically?” he asked.
Asked to respond to Mamata's allegations, Bhattacharya said she should take them up with the commission.
“Even before the SIR was announced, she had been opposing the process as she wants to keep the ASDD (absentee, shifted, deceased, duplicate) names and infiltrators in the electoral roll. The issues we have been highlighting are essential for publishing a clean electoral roll,” he said.