TMC alleges 'silent rigging' in voter list, accuses BJP, EC of conspiracy before SIR exercise

Kolkata: The TMC on Thursday accused the Election Commission and the BJP of "massive discrepancies" in the voter rolls, alleging that thousands of names were being struck off the list in a "pre-planned conspiracy" ahead of the state's Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls. Addressing a press conference here, TMC spokesperson and state general secretary Kunal Ghosh claimed that the party had detected glaring irregularities between the 2002 voter list and the one recently uploaded on the Commission's website. He alleged that the manipulation was being orchestrated from the BJP's offices "in connivance" with sections of the poll panel. "This is silent rigging. In one area, the 2002 list had 717 voters; now it shows just 140. They all couldn't have died together!" Ghosh said, adding that "in several booths, hundreds of names have vanished without any official explanation."

According to the TMC, in Ashoknagar Assembly constituency's Guma-1 Gram Panchayat under Habra-2 block, booth number 159 currently shows zero registered voters on the EC's website, though the 2002 list had nearly 900 names. Similar cases have allegedly been found in Cooch Behar, where multiple booths now show between 400 and 900 missing voters, the party claimed. "This is a calculated move to delete genuine voters from the rolls. The conspiracy was hatched inside the BJP party offices and implemented through the Election Commission's portal. Otherwise, how do BJP leaders know beforehand that lakhs of names will be removed?" Ghosh alleged. The ruling party in Bengal said it has already lodged a formal complaint with the Commission, demanding a full-scale investigation into what it described as "a dangerous attempt to manipulate the electoral process." "We will not allow even a single legitimate voter's name to be deleted," Ghosh asserted, adding that the party was collecting booth-wise evidence to present before the EC. State minister Chandrima Bhattacharya, who was also present at the briefing, said the alleged irregularities had boomeranged on the BJP as well. "In several areas, even BJP supporters have found their names missing. This has triggered resentment within their own ranks," she said. The TMC's explosive charge comes days after a couple of suicides and panic incidents were reported from North Bengal districts over fears surrounding the ongoing SIR exercise, which seeks to verify and update the voter list using data from the 2002 rolls.