TMC alleges EC allowed bulk submission of Form 6 by BJP to enrol voters from other states in Bengal

Kolkata: The Trinamool Congress (TMC) on Monday accused the Election Commission (EC) of helping the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in smuggling voters from other states to West Bengal.

Abhishek Banerjee, the general secretary of the TMC in West Bengal, posted on X videos, which the party claimed to be evidence of fraudulent Form 6 applications being submitted to the Election Commission.

The videos, according to Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s party, showed heaps of Form 6, used to apply to the EC for inclusion in the electoral rolls, submitted by the BJP operatives at the office of the Chief Electoral Officer of West Bengal.

The TMC called the videos proof of “an electoral theft” being committed by the BJP in “broad daylight”.

“What we are witnessing is deeply concerning. There are growing indications of a coordinated attempt to interfere with the democratic rights of the people of Bengal – with the BJP at the centre of it and the ECI seemingly looking the other way,” Abhishek posted on X, before leading a TMC delegation to the office of the CEO in Kolkata to protest against what he described as a “bid to steal the mandate”.

The TMC has already been running a campaign against the EC over the past several months, alleging that the poll panel had carried out the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls in the state to ensure an edge for the BJP and that a large number of genuine voters had been deleted from the rolls to manipulate the results of the assembly polls.

“The bid to steal the mandate of West Bengal has been caught in broad daylight. This is precisely how they (BJP) won in Maharashtra and Haryana; this is precisely how they hijacked the elections in Delhi. They now want to do the same in Bengal,” the Numero Due of the TMC told journalists. “People deserve to know what is happening to their votes. This isn’t a small issue. It goes against the basic principle of free and fair elections.”

Abhishek alleged that the TMC had received credible reports from several districts that large numbers of Form 6 applications were being submitted “in a questionable manner”.

“These are not routine additions. There are serious concerns that many of these entries may be linked to individuals who have no real connection to Bengal—people who don’t live here, don’t work here and have no stake in the state,” he wrote on X, adding, “The video only adds to these concerns. It appears to show thousands of such forms being processed and stacked, raising valid questions about the scale and intent behind this exercise.”

The ruling party alleged that the EC had accepted the bulk submissions of thousands of Form 6 applications without any statutory provision or legal basis. It accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah of “calling the shots” from Delhi.

“Their (the BJP’s) despicable IT Cell chief (Amit Malviya) is executing the dirty work on the ground,” it added and then hit out at the EC: “And the Vanish Commission is happily playing along, actively sabotaging free and fair elections in Bengal. This is daylight electoral theft. But Bengal is wide awake.”