TMC to raise issue of 40 SIR deaths in winter session of Parliament

PTI, NEW DELHI, NOV 28, 2025: A Trinamool Congress delegation on Friday met the full bench of the Election Commission of India here and alleged that at least 40 SIR-related deaths had taken place in West Bengal, accusing the poll panel chief of having "blood on his hands". The 10-member delegation, led by TMC Rajya Sabha leader Derek O'Brien, met the EC officials amid the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in West Bengal. The delegation consisted of Lok Sabha MPs Mahua Moitra, Satabdi Roy, Kalyan Banerjee, Pratima Mondal, Sajda Ahmed, and Rajya Sabha MPs Dola Sen, Mamata Thakur, Saket Gokhale, and Prakash Chik Barik.

Speaking to reporters after the meeting, O'Brien said the party raised five questions, but Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar did not give any answers. "We started the meeting by stating that the CEC has blood on his hands. We raised five questions. After this, Kalyan Banerjee, Mahua Moitra, and Mamata Bala Thakur spoke and shared whatever they had to in about 40 minutes," O'Brien said. "Then the CEC spoke uninterrupted for one hour. We were also not interrupted while we spoke, but we did not receive any answer to any of our five questions," he said.

Moitra said the delegation shared with the CEC a list of 40 people whose deaths, they alleged, were linked to the SIR process. The commission, however, dismissed it as mere allegations, the Lok Sabha MP claimed.

Meanwhile, O'Brien asserted that the TMC is not opposed to the concept of SIR, but is "strongly opposed to the unplanned manner in which the CEC and EC are going about the job." "Completely unplanned and heartless," he said about the SIR exercise. The SIR is currently underway in 12 states and Union Territories, including West Bengal.

Later in the day, a senior leader of the party said that the TMC will raise the SIR exercise and deaths allegedly linked to it in West Bengal during the winter session of Parliament next month. The party claimed the accelerated voter-roll revision has unleashed fear, fatigue, and fatalities among Booth Level Officers (BLOs) and citizens, and will question why West Bengal has been subjected to the most intensive scrutiny while several border states with similar demographic profiles have been exempted from the SIR, the leader said.

The TMC said it would seek an explanation from the Centre and the EC on the selection of states for the SIR. The senior party MP said: "Why have Tripura, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, and Manipur, all bordering countries like Bangladesh and Myanmar, been exempted entirely? Why is Assam under a lighter Special Revision? Is the real intent to challenge Bengali identity and systematically prune Bengali voters from the rolls?"

The winter session of Parliament will be conducted between December 1 and 19. Senior TMC leaders said the voter-roll revision, launched in early November across 12 states and Union territories, has been carried out in West Bengal with "extraordinary haste," triggering panic among citizens and placing an "unprecedented burden" on Booth Level Officers (BLOs), several of whom have reportedly died while juggling teaching duties and late-night enumeration work.

The party claimed that 41 people, including four BLOs, have died since the start of the process. Families of some of the deceased have attributed their deaths to crippling deadlines, inadequate training, and the stress of the massive exercise. "What should normally take two to three years has been squeezed into two months just to please political masters at the Centre," a TMC MP alleged.

According to official data, the West Bengal SIR is nearing completion, with 7.64 crore forms circulated, 82 percent digitised, and 99.8 percent of voters covered in the door-to-door verification drive. The final electoral roll is expected to be published on February 7, 2026. But TMC leaders said the numbers do not reveal the human toll of the exercise.