Mamata Banerjee, Chief Minister of West Bengal, continued her sit-in protest on Saturday against what she described as arbitrary deletions from electoral rolls under the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) process, spending the night at the demonstration site for the second consecutive day.
Banerjee had launched the protest on Friday at Metro Channel, accusing the Election Commission of India of acting in concert with the Bharatiya Janata Party to “disenfranchise Bengal voters” ahead of the state assembly elections.
The chief minister remained at the venue overnight, joined by senior leaders of the All India Trinamool Congress, legislators and party workers, as the usually busy Esplanade area turned into a temporary political camp.
Speaking to supporters on Friday afternoon, Banerjee alleged that large numbers of genuine voters were being removed from the electoral rolls as part of the SIR exercise. She also repeated her claim that several individuals had been incorrectly listed as deceased and said she would bring such voters before the media and the Election Commission to highlight what she termed an attempt to manipulate the voter list in favour of the BJP in the upcoming polls.
Senior TMC leaders and state ministers remained present at the site, while supporters continued to gather there on Saturday morning.
The protest comes days before a full bench of the Election Commission is scheduled to visit West Bengal, at a time when political tensions in the state have intensified over the ongoing voter list revision ahead of the assembly elections.
According to official data released on February 28, around 63.66 lakh names, nearly 8.3 per cent of the electorate, have been removed from the rolls since the SIR process began in November last year, bringing down the total number of voters from about 7.66 crore to just over 7.04 crore.
In addition, over 60.06 lakh electors have been placed in the “under adjudication” category, meaning their eligibility will be determined through legal scrutiny in the coming weeks. This process could significantly affect constituency-level electoral calculations.
