Amid fears of voter purge, Abhishek directs to open area-wise help desks, 294 war rooms

Kolkata: Amid rising confusion, despair, and mounting outrage over the BJP-led Centre’s handling of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) process in Bengal — which has already claimed two lives — Trinamool Congress (TMC) national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee, during a virtual meeting with party functionaries on Friday, unveiled an aggressive action plan to counter the crisis, including announcing the setting up of area-wise help desks across the state from November 4 to December 4 to assist citizens caught in the tangle of voter verification.

Banerjee has also directed his party leaders to open 294 war rooms to be supervised by MLAs. In areas where there are no TMC MLAs, the party’s block presidents will manage the war rooms. Adequate laptops, Internet connections will be available in war rooms. About 4 to 5 party workers will be present in each war room.

The SIR process, being conducted by the Election Commission, will see booth-level officers (BLOs) visit every household across Bengal between November 4 and December 4. The distribution of enumeration forms — meant for the state’s 7.6 crore voters — will also begin on November 4.

Banerjee’s message, on Friday, was clear and pointed — “No legitimate voter from Bengal should be disenfranchised through this SIR process”.

Among a gamut of directives for the party’s grassroots machinery, Banerjee issued vivid instructions to booth-level agents, urging TMC workers to maintain a “constant watch” on BLOs throughout the revision drive.

He stressed that “not a single BLO should be left unattended for even a minute,” insisting that workers remain their (BLOs) “shadow” until the SIR process concludes.

All the MLAs and MPs have been urged to coordinate with BLO-2s from November 4. One MLA will coordinate with 30 BLO-2s. Banerjee, during the meeting, reaffirmed that TMC’s foremost duty is to safeguard every citizen’s Constitutional right to vote.

“We are determined to stand shoulder to shoulder with the people, assisting them with documentation, addressing grievances, and ensuring that their names remain secure on the electoral rolls,” Banerjee said in the meeting attended by at least 18,000 party leaders and workers.

“The BJP wants to divide Bengal and disenfranchise minorities, Matuas, and poor voters. We must send a strong message that the TMC stands firmly with the people,” he stated.

“We are matching online and hard copies of voter lists and will place the evidence before the court,” he said, alleging that “thousands of genuine voters’ names” were found missing in some areas.

Describing the next six months as the party’s “acid test,” he claimed the voter list revision, announced on October 27, was being conducted at the BJP’s behest to manipulate the rolls ahead of the 2026 Assembly polls.

“The BJP’s goal is not to identify infiltrators. If that were true, they would have done the same exercise in Assam, Meghalaya or Tripura. This is a political operation aimed at deleting genuine voters,” Banerjee was quoted as saying by party insiders.

“Any issue must be immediately escalated to the MLA or MP. If there’s a serious problem, it should be reported directly to me via WhatsApp,” he said.

“If even one eligible voter’s name is removed, one lakh people from Bengal will hold a dharna outside the Election Commission office in New Delhi,” Banerjee warned, reiterating his earlier statement made this week.

Banerjee said the party’s Booth and Territorial Electoral Review Systems (BERS and TERS) had already been activated to prevent manipulation during the revision. “Knowing what the BJP is capable of, we had already set up BERS and TERS. Now it’s time to put them into full action,” he is learnt to have said.

Meanwhile, TMC once again mentioned the names of a few booths where they claimed discrepancies were spotted.

In one Basirhat booth alone, the online list shows a blank stretch from S. No. 859–892. Names present in 2002 have simply vanished today. Barely days into the Election Commission’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR), Bengal is witnessing names vanishing from electoral rolls across Natabari, Mathabhanga, Ashoknagar and Basirhat, raising fears of a coordinated voter purge.

Trinamool has termed the exercise “Silent Invisible Rigging”, a charge earlier raised by its national general secretary, alleging that the process is being misused to selectively erase Bengali voters while hiding behind bureaucratic smokescreens. The party has warned that if legitimate voters are struck off, its protest will reach the doors of Nirvachan Sadan.