Trinamool Congress weaponises death toll linking SIR, ignores border flux

New Delhi, Nov 20 In West Bengal, the current political atmosphere is less about cleaning electoral rolls and more about a zero-sum game for the 2026 Assembly elections.

The state’s ruling Trinamool Congress has chosen to leverage public fear, transforming genuine grief and bureaucratic anxiety into a political tool, while leaving the complex, cross-border demographic question to linger.

Even as media across all platforms report the large numbers of alleged unaccounted Bangladeshi migrants trying to return home, West Bengal’s ruling party is fanning fears over the Election Commission’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the voters’ list in the state.

On Thursday, November 20, it pointed out to “31 deaths in 24 days in the name of Silent Invisible Rigging (SIR) in Bengal”, adding, “The kind of stories the legacy media are too skittish to touch”.

Critics argue that Trinamool's strategy is a deliberate attempt to whip up fear psychosis among marginalised and minority voters, ensuring their allegiance by portraying the electoral revision as a tool of the opposition to strip them of their citizenship. It is also trying to rein in the coverage at the Bangladesh border.

Instead of allaying fears over a routine, official exercise, it is adding to the anxiety, claim the state’s principal Opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Instead of admitting to the existence of migrants, some of whom have even acquired documents like Aadhaar and ration cards, it has turned its face away, its leaders claim.

On the large numbers of people assembled at the Bangladesh border, Trinamool spokesperson Kunal Ghosh termed it all as scripted. “There’s BSF at the border, there’s central intelligence agencies. What are they doing?” he quipped while speaking to the media on Thursday, November 20, adding, “The fake voter cards may have been made by the (earlier) Left (government),” thus washing his government’s hands off any responsibility for procurement or official verification.

The trend was noticed sometime in July, days after the process of SIR was taken up in adjoining Bihar. Some residents in Kolkata complained of their household help missing without informing them.

A visit to some of their dwellings led to either locked or empty abodes. Soon, reports came from other districts near the eastern border saying that several shanties were getting vacant. Thereafter started the assembly of groups at the borders started.

Now there are mounting concerns at the borders, with crowds assembling faster than they can be dispersed.

The BSF needs to coordinate with their counterparts, the Bangladesh Border Guards, in allowing large-scale migration.

Thus, the SIR exercise, intended to clean up electoral rolls by weeding out duplicate, deceased, or relocated voters, has spiralled into a major political crisis in West Bengal.

The process includes a meticulous, door-to-door verification, often relying on documents dating back to the 2002 electoral roll, a requirement that has triggered widespread confusion and panic among a population with often incomplete or misplaced documentation.

The Trinamool Congress has seized on this public anxiety, blaming SIR after reports of several deaths, including alleged suicides and fatal cardiac arrests – some involving Booth Level Officers (BLOs) working under pressure and others reportedly stressed over the verification process.

The Election Commission has clarified that the SIR is a routine constitutional exercise and that it is not the authority to decide citizenship issues.

The BJP has accused the Trinamool of “vulture politics” and “politicising dead bodies” for electoral advantage, alleging that the ruling party is fanning a false narrative, often using local leaders to spread rumours of impending deportation to pressure citizens into supporting it.

--IANS

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