West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee started a protest here on Friday (March 6, 2026) to protest against the alleged arbitrary deletion of names of voters from the voter list after Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in the state.
Starting a protest near the Esplanade metro station in Kolkata, Banerjee accused the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Election Commission of conspiring to disenfranchise Bengali voters and pledged to expose them.
Trinamool Congress chief Banerjee said, ‘I will expose the BJP-Election Commission conspiracy to disenfranchise Bengali voters.’ He also alleged that many voters were wrongly marked as dead in the revised voter list.
Mamata Banerjee said, ‘I will present at this protest site those voters who have been declared dead by the Election Commission.’ Mamata Banerjee started the protest in central Kolkata at 2:15 pm.
The strike was announced by Trinamool Congress national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee on Sunday. He had accused the Election Commission of taking politically motivated action, which could disenfranchise millions of legitimate voters months before the assembly elections.
This protest by the ruling party is coming just days after the Election Commission published the post-SIR voter lists, which has changed the voter count of the state to a great extent.
According to official data released in the state on February 28, about 8.3 per cent of the number of voters, or 63.66 lakh names, have been deleted since the SIR process began in November last year, reducing the voter base from about 7.66 crore to a little over 7.04 crore.
Additionally, more than 60.06 lakh voters have been placed in the judicial scrutiny category, meaning their eligibility will be determined through a legal investigation in the coming weeks. This is a process that can change the electoral equations at the constituency level.
