Mamata Banerjee Likely to Visit Delhi Amid SIR Row; Assembly Session Rescheduled, Interim Budget on February 5

PTI, KOLKATA, JAN 27, 2026: Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is likely to travel to New Delhi next week amid TMC's protest over the ongoing SIR exercise, a development that has also led to the postponement of the tabling of the state's interim budget to February 5, 2026, party and Assembly sources said.

The schedule for the interim budget session of the 294-member West Bengal Legislative Assembly, which is due to go to the polls in about three months, has been officially revised, with the session now slated to begin on February 3, 2026, instead of January 31, 2026. The vote-on-account budget, earlier scheduled to be presented on February 2, 2026, will now be tabled on February 5, 2026.

"The budget will now be tabled on February 5. The session will begin on February 3," Assembly Speaker Biman Banerjee told news agency PTI.

The rescheduling comes as Mamata is expected to visit the national capital, though the exact dates and itinerary of her travel have not yet been finalised.

According to party sources, the Chief Minister may travel to Delhi during the Parliament session, which would also provide her an opportunity to interact with leaders of other Opposition parties.

Irrespective of the timing, party leaders said her central objective would be to take the West Bengal-specific political battle over SIR to the national stage.

The SIR of electoral rolls began in West Bengal on November 4, the same day Mamata and TMC national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee led a protest march through the streets of Kolkata.

Addressing a rally after the march, Abhishek had warned that the party would take the agitation to Delhi if even a single "genuine voter" was excluded from the rolls.

The TMC has since repeatedly reiterated that warning, accusing the Election Commission, in collusion with the BJP, of facilitating large-scale exclusion of legitimate voters under the guise of electoral roll revision.

Mamata herself, party sources said, informed her close aides on Monday that she was preparing for a Delhi visit as part of the broader political push against SIR. The party's leadership believes that her presence in Delhi would significantly raise the political temperature around the issue, particularly in the backdrop of the 2026 West Bengal Assembly elections.