Bengal Assembly polls 2026 | Mamata urges people to avenge snatching away of voting rights, Suvendu sees advantage BJP in 'fake voter' deletions

Kolkata: With nearly 12 lakh of over 60 lakh West Bengal voters placed in the “under adjudication” category being disenfranchised so far, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday called upon people to avenge the harassment caused by the Special Intensive Revision of the electoral rolls in the state by voting against the Bharatiya Janata Party.

Mamata’s Trinamool Congress, which has been ruling West Bengal since 2011, has been accusing the Election Commission of conducting the SIR of the electoral rolls in the state in a flawed manner to ensure an advantage for the BJP in the assembly polls.

“Today, they are snatching away your voting rights; tomorrow, they will snatch away citizenship by bringing in the NRC (National Register of Citizens),” Mamata said at an election rally in Maynaguri in North Bengal. The TMC supremo said that she and her party would never allow harassment of people of West Bengal in the name of updating the NRC of the state, like neighbouring Assam. She said that the TMC would never allow the BJP-led government in the centre to send people of the state to the detention centres for deportation.

“Though I am not sure, I have heard that eight lakh voters have been struck off the rolls out of the 27 lakhs, who were among the 60 lakhs in the ‘under adjudication’ category and whose cases were adjudicated before the publication of the first supplementary list,” she said at another rally in Naxalbari in Siliguri. “But where is that list? Why have hard copies of that list not yet been put up in government offices so far?”, she wondered, adding: “I can only verify the information after that list is displayed.”

As many as 63.66 lakh voters – around 8.3% of the electorate – have been struck off from the electoral rolls since the special revision of the lists was launched in November 2025, bringing down the size of the electorate to about 7.08 crore. Besides, more than 60.06 lakh voters were placed in the “under adjudication” category.

The judicial officers, according to the sources, have completed deciding on nearly half of the cases placed in the “under adjudication” category, and about 40% of them were deleted. The first supplementary roll containing the names of the “under adjudication” voters found to be eligible to remain on the list was published on Monday.

The voters, who were struck off the rolls, could appeal to the tribunals.

Suvendu Adhikari, the de facto chief ministerial candidate of the BJP, on the other hand, said that the SIR of the electoral rolls in the state had already resulted in the removal of around 79 lakh fake voters, and this would help the BJP win at least 177 of the 294 seats in the state assembly. He alleged in a BJP rally in Purba Medinipur that the ruling Trinamool Congress had in the past always relied on fake voters to remain in power.