TMC will ‘not accept’ voter list with discrepancies, says Abhishek Banerjee

New Delhi: Trinamool Congress (TMC) leader Abhishek Banerjee on Wednesday said the Election Commission (EC) has failed to address the party’s concerns over the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in West Bengal, warning that the TMC will “not accept” the final voter list if it contains “discrepancies”.

Speaking to the media after a 10-member TMC delegation met the full bench of the EC, Banerjee said the party would pursue legal action if necessary. “If it has discrepancies, why would we accept it. We would fight it legally,” he stated.

Banerjee alleged that “vote chori” (vote theft) in elections is happening through manipulation of the voter list rather than through EVMs. He claimed that opposition parties could have won states such as Maharashtra, Haryana, and Bihar if they had raised the issue more aggressively.

The TMC delegation raised several concerns with the EC, including the summoning of 1.36 crore voters under the SIR process. Banerjee described the Chief Election Commissioner as “aggressive” during the meeting. “When we started talking, he started losing his temper… I said you are nominated, I am elected… If he has the guts, he should release the footage,” he said.

Banerjee accused the poll panel of failing to allay the party’s apprehensions and claimed there was a “conspiracy to malign” West Bengal by raising the “bogey of infiltration”. He challenged the EC to release details of Bangladeshis and Rohingyas among the 58 lakh voters whose names were deleted from the draft electoral roll.

“There is selective targeting, allegations of infiltration, which are leaked to malign West Bengal. We asked the CEC to come out with a list of how many Bangladeshis or Rohingyas have been found in West Bengal,” he said.

The TMC also questioned the EC’s introduction of a new category called “logical discrepancies,” which has led to the summoning of 1.36 crore voters for hearings over issues such as mismatches in father’s name or unusual age gaps between parents and children. Banerjee urged that senior citizens, people with disabilities, and those with comorbidities should be allowed to have hearings conducted at home.

Alleging that the electoral roll was being “weaponised”, Banerjee appealed to all like-minded parties to scrutinise the voter list. “The vote-chori is happening in the voters’ list, not through EVMs. You don’t know what algorithm, software they are using to disenfranchise people. They are trying to weaponise the electoral roll,” he said.

“Earlier, voters used to decide the government; now the government is deciding the voters,” Banerjee added, urging opposition parties to focus their fight on the ground rather than in the media or on social media. “People are watching, if you put up a fight, the BJP won’t win, because it will be the people who decide,” he said.

The TMC delegation included Rajya Sabha leader Derek O’Brien, MPs Saket Gokhale, Ritabrata Banerjee, and Mamata Thakur, as well as West Bengal ministers Manas Bhunia, Pradip Mazumdar, and Chandrima Bhattacharya.