Suvendu Adhikari
Credit: PTI Photo
Kolkata: The Bharatiya Janata Party on Wednesday submitted to the Election Commission what it claimed to be “irrefutable evidence” about over 13.25 lakh cases of “duplicate, fraudulent and multiple entries” in the electoral rolls of five of the 42 parliamentary constituencies of West Bengal.
The BJP accused the ruling Trinamool Congress of orchestrating an electoral fraud by making dubious entries in the electoral rolls using the state administration.
“This isn't just a glitch. This is a deliberate electoral fraud orchestrated by the TMC to steal (West) Bengal's mandate, by misusing the administration,” Suvendu Adhikari, a BJP heavyweight in West Bengal and the Leader of Opposition in the state assembly, posted on X. “The TMC thinks they can manipulate Democracy with diluted Voter Lists. Well, we will not let that happen.”
Suvendu turned up at the office of the Chief Electoral Officer of West Bengal with several bundles of papers, with what he claimed to be evidence of 13.25 lakh cases of “duplicate, fraudulent and multiple entries” in the electoral rolls of five Lok Sabha constituencies in the state – Coochbehar, Birbhum, Kanthi, Tamluk and Purulia. “Alongside physical copies of the voters’ lists wherein the dubious entries were marked, we also handed over (to the CEO) a pen drive containing related data for their convenience,” said Suvendu, a frontrunner for the BJP’s chief ministerial candidate in the 2026 assembly elections in West Bengal.
Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s party, on the other hand, accused the Election Commission of acting at the behest of the BJP and making changes in the rules of appointing the Booth Level Agents (BLA) for the ongoing Special Intensive Review of the electoral rolls in the state. The EC drew the flak from the ruling TMC after the poll panel allowed the political parties to appoint any voter of any booth in the assembly constituency as the BLA of any booth in the same constituency.
Earlier, the political parties were allowed to appoint a voter of a particular booth as the BLA for that booth only.
Kalyan Banerjee, a member of the Lok Sabha from the TMC, alleged that the BJP had found it difficult to appoint the BLA in a large number of booths across the state, which was why it had made the EC ease the rules. “The EC has once again bent the rules of the SIR process overnight — blatantly to favour the BJP!” Kalyan alleged while speaking to journalists in Kolkata on Wednesday. “This isn’t a reform — it’s a calculated manipulation! How shamelessly can the Election Commission compromise its neutrality? The entire SIR process has been turned into a tool to serve the BJP’s political convenience instead of protecting electoral fairness.”
The BLAs are appointed by the political parties to accompany the Booth Level Officers (BLOs) during the SIR of the electoral rolls.