New Delhi: 91,712 names disappeared from the electoral rolls in Samserganj after the Special Intensive Revision, yet the BJP did not win the seat. 

That number is now at the heart of the party’s counterattack as the controversy over alleged dissent within the Election Commission spills into a full-blown political battle.

BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra on Wednesday challenged the Opposition’s contention that voter deletions during the Bengal SIR helped the BJP electorally, citing results from constituencies that witnessed some of the highest deletions.

Patra said that among the 20 Assembly seats with the highest number of deleted voters, the Trinamool Congress won 13 while the BJP secured six.

‘If we won through ‘vote chori’, then how did we lose more than half of the seats?’ Patra asked.

He singled out Samserganj in Murshidabad, where 91,712 voters, accounting for more than one in three names, were removed from the rolls following the SIR.

TMC candidate Mohammed Noor Alam nevertheless won the constituency with 61,918 votes, defeating his nearest Congress rival, while the BJP was nowhere in the picture.

Patra’s offensive came after an Indian Express investigation reported that Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had recorded objections at least 14 times over 10 months on issues involving electoral rolls, voter registration, deletion and restoration of names, appeals and the Election Commission’s technology systems.

The Election Commission has pushed back against the controversy, saying differing views and written observations are part of its internal deliberative process and that its official decisions carried the required legal sanction.

The Bengal SIR has already faced scrutiny before the Supreme Court. Around 700 judicial officers were tasked with examining flagged cases.

Eventually, 27.16 lakh voters were removed from the rolls. The Election Commission recently told the Supreme Court that more than 22 lakh of those deleted voters had appealed for restoration.

Overall, 38.31 lakh appeals were filed, including 16.10 lakh seeking further deletions.

Questions have also emerged over appeals against decisions to retain voters and the role of ERONET, the electoral roll management software integrated with ECINET.

According to the Indian Express investigation, Sandhu had raised questions over electoral processes and decisions that he said had been taken without the knowledge or approval of all commissioners.

The report said Sandhu and Joshi repeatedly put their concerns in writing, including over the handling of electoral roll systems.

Patra, however, argued that the exchanges demonstrated institutional deliberation rather than wrongdoing.

‘This tells us that this is the beauty of the democratic process. After all deliberations, all election commissioners were on the same page,’ he said.

The BJP spokesperson also accused the Opposition of targeting constitutional institutions after failing to win public support, while maintaining that his party was not defending any particular official.

‘We are not trying to save any specific individual; we are trying to save India's democracy,’ Patra said.

The political temperature rose further as former West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee demanded fresh elections in Bengal and the arrest of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, accusing the BJP and the CEC of working together to influence the election.

With the Election Commission defending its decision-making and the Opposition citing the reported internal objections, the battle over Bengal’s SIR has now moved beyond voter deletions alone to the question of how some of the country’s most consequential electoral decisions were taken.