Didi's day with 'Deleted': Mamata slams BJP, EC over SIR voter deletions in Malda
Telegraph | 5 April 2026
Mamata Banerjee stopped in the middle of her speech and told the crowd: “Please raise your hands.”
She wanted to see how many among her audience of about 6,000 had so far been excluded from the post-SIR electoral rolls.
What she saw left her visibly shocked: More than half of those present at Saturday’s rally in minority-dominated Manikchak, Malda, seemed to have raised their hands.
After a few speechless seconds, Mamata had one telling question: “Then who will vote?”
The Trinamool chief had been about 12 minutes into her speech at Enayetpur when she said: “Many of you have had your names removed during the SIR. Those whose names have been removed, please raise your hands.”
Over half the women sitting in the front rows did. Behind them rose another wall of hands. As though unwilling to believe her eyes, Mamata sought a re-run.
“Those whose names have been removed, raise your hands properly,” she said.
It was no different this time. Mamata asked those filming the rally: “Take the images properly. Record this on video.”
Manikchak has a little over 50 per cent minority population, going up to 90 per cent in Enayetpur. In 2021, Trinamool’s Sabitri Mitra won Manikchak by nearly 34,000 votes. This time, the party has dropped Mitra and fielded Kabita Mandal for the April 23 contest.
Before the SIR began, Manikchak had 2,53,353 voters. The preliminary “final” list of February 28 marked 65,496 voters (26 per cent) as “under adjudication”.
Over the past few months, Mamata has been steadfast in attacking the BJP and the Election Commission over the SIR, calling it a conspiracy to disenfranchise her voters and install a BJP government in Bengal. On Saturday, she had a graphic view of the scale of the exclusions.
“It was an eye-opener…. (An eye estimation suggested that) the names of half of those in the crowd were not on the electoral rolls,” a senior Trinamool leader said.
“Didi’s fear is genuine; the exclusion of so many voters means a direct attack on the party’s minority vote bank.”
A few more supplementary voter lists are yet to be published.
Straw poll over, the chief minister fired a fresh fusillade against the poll panel and the BJP.
“Will the BJP’s vanishing washing machine vote? Will you take away all the voting rights of the people? What is happening? In the process of acting as agents of the BJP, is this turning into a mockery of democracy?” she said.
Trinamool leaders said the large number of hands raised at Mamata’s rally showed why voters were furious about the SIR.
On Wednesday, an angry mob of thousands in Mothabari, 32km from Manikchak, had held four male and three women judicial officers — adjudicators of the fate of doubtful voters — hostage for nearly nine hours.
The mob blocked NH12 for hours and attacked the vehicles of the judicial officers when police and central forces rescued them.
A Trinamool leader said that although Mamata had claimed credit for lawyer Mofakkerul Islam’s arrest over the incident, the party could not afford to ignore the message from the protests, spreading in multiple pockets, particularly minority-dominated areas where most deletions have happened.
“The February 28 rolls made it clear that nearly one-third of the 60 lakh voters put under adjudication were from Murshidabad and Malda, two districts that border Bangladesh and have large minority populations,” the leader said.
He underlined that Muslims, women and the poor — who largely tend to support Trinamool — were the worst sufferers of the SIR.
Malda had 8,28,080 voters (28 per cent) under adjudication from a total of 29,86,203 (pre-SIR figure) while the numbers for Murshidabad were 11,21,205 (20.4 per cent) out of 54,75,265.
Mamata has asked her party workers to help deleted voters apply to the tribunals.
“For those whose names have been removed, I would request the party leaders — merely campaigning during elections will not be enough,” she said.
“People are ready to vote. Just as the BLOs (helped people fill in the enumeration forms) when the SIR was announced, everyone should come forward and help them (deleted voters) apply before the tribunals,” she said.
Mamata said 250 people had died during the SIR process, of whom half were Hindus and the other half Muslims.
“If you want the souls of those who died because of the SIR to rest in peace, please cast your votes in favour of the Trinamool Congress,” Mamata said in Gajole, Malda.
Mausam regret
Mamata expressed her disappointment with former Malda Trinamool leader Mausam Benazir Noor, who recently resigned from the Rajya Sabha and returned to the Congress, without naming her.
“I never got a chance to be in the Rajya Sabha, but I sent her there. I made her a candidate in the Lok Sabha,” Mamata said.
“I used to care for her the way a mother loves her child. However, she left the party before the election. I wish her well.”
Mausam is contesting as a Congress candidate from Malatipur in Malda.
Drone near chopper
As Mamata was about to climb into her helicopter in Malatipur, Malda, she spotted a drone flying overhead, close to the chopper. She grabbed a microphone and asked the police to address the issue and identify those responsible.