TMC trying to remove Hindu refugees, linguistic minority from Bengal's voter list, alleges BJP

The BJP alleged that the TMC had planned to remove voters known to be voting against it.

Kolkata: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has launched a campaign in West Bengal to counter the ruling Trinamool Congress’ (TMC) ‘mission’ to detect ‘ghost voters’ in the electoral rolls of the state.

The BJP has urged people to get in touch with its leaders and the workers if they get struck out from the electoral rolls due to the campaign launched by the TMC across West Bengal.

The saffron party alleged that Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s party launched the campaign for the scrutiny of the electoral rolls with a hidden agenda of removing the names of the people of the linguistic minority community and Hindu refugees.

Banerjee, the TMC supremo, had on Thursday accused the BJP of manipulating the electoral rolls with the blessings of the EC and of enrolling people from Punjab, Haryana and Gujarat as electors in West Bengal. She had tasked her party’s leaders and workers across the state to run a campaign to detect the ‘ghost voters’ in the electoral rolls within 10 days.

Senior TMC leader and Mayor of Kolkata, Firhad Hakim, launched the campaign in Bhabanipur, the assembly constituency of the party supremo herself. Hakim, who is also a minister in the state government, led the local party workers and leaders in a door-to-door campaign to find the ‘ghost voters’.

The BJP alleged that the TMC had planned to remove the voters known to be voting against it.

Indrajit Khatik, a BJP leader, said that the party would also spread the campaign beyond Bhabanipur.

Banerjee had cited a few examples of people of Haryana, Gujarat and Punjab having the same EPIC numbers as the voters of West Bengal. She had alleged that the electoral rolls of West Bengal had been manipulated to make it easier for the BJP to bring in people from other states to cast votes in West Bengal in its favour and against the TMC during the 2026 assembly elections.

The EC on Sunday clarified that duplication in the EPIC number did not imply duplicate or fake voters.

The BJP already cried foul over the TMC’s campaign about the ‘ghost voters’ from Punjab, Haryana and Gujarat allegedly making their way into the electoral roll in West Bengal, with Banerjee’s allegations setting the stage for her party to once again brand the saffron party as an ‘outsider’ in the state and rerun the “local versus outsider” blitzkrieg, which had helped her win the 2021 state assembly elections.

State BJP heavyweight, Suvendu Adhikari, urged the EC to act against the ‘biased’ officers of the government of West Bengal for aiding the TMC’s campaign for scrutiny of the electoral rolls. The Leader of the Opposition in the state assembly specifically demanded action against a Block Development Officer of Shantipur in Nadia after the officer called the leaders of local units of all political parties to discuss the electoral rolls in his capacity as the Assistant Returning Officer of two assembly constituencies.