EC officials should be jailed for SIR mistakes: Ananta Maharaj
Times of India | 3 February 2026
Jalpaiguri: EC should be held accountable and poll officials jailed for mistakes in SIR forms and subsequent harassment, said BJP Rajya Sabha member and Cooch Behar neta Ananta Maharaj on Sunday.
Addressing a gathering at Baneswar on the birth anniversary of Cooch Behar hero Veer Chila Roy, Ananta expressed his anger over the alleged harassment of members of the Rajbanshi community during SIR hearings. "When tribals are being spared from producing identity documents, how can the EC seek papers from Rajbanshi people, who are the sons of the soil?" he asked, claiming that the SIR process was wrong.
The MP said, "The SIR exercise has been started with a wrong route map. It is my personal opinion that this process is wrong. The mistakes which are being heaped on people are actually the EC's mistakes. The EC authorities... or those who did this... should be in jail first. They should face trial. They are alleging that fathers' names are different, sons' are different. There are spelling mismatches, age mismatches."
Addressing the EC, he said, "Your former employees who did this should now be in jail. First put them in jail, and then do SIR. People did not give those wrong spellings. The EC officers did it."
Reacting to this, TMC wrote on X: "Until yesterday, BJP netas were acting as unofficial press secretaries of EC, answering every question meant for the Commission, defending every indefensible act of SIR. Today, the same faces have suddenly discovered their conscience. From Suvendu Adhikari to Samik Bhattacharya to Ananta Maharaj, BJP is now questioning the very process they championed."
It added, "This U-turn has only 2 explanations. Either the EC has failed to deliver BJP's deletion quota, or BJP, realising how brutally its conspiracy to disenfranchise Bengal's voters has backfired, is now trying to scrub its hands clean of the blood of 150 innocent."
Bengal BJP did not formally react to the MP's statement.