Kolkata: Leader of Opposition Suvendu Adhikari said Muslims in West Bengal have accepted the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls as a routine administrative exercise. He said they did not respond to the political narrative he attributed to Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. He added that the distribution of enumeration forms helped communities understand the purpose of the process.
Adhikari presented alleged examples of duplicate voters during a press briefing at the BJP office. He said the party had given the Election Commission hard copies and digital files with more than thirteen lakh names flagged as multiple duplicate entries. He said at least half will be removed after scrutiny. He also said the party found between fifty and one hundred and fifty dead voters in each of twenty booths across twenty constituencies.
He shared visuals of people he said were illegal immigrants leaving West Bengal for Bangladesh following the SIR announcement. He named Swarupnagar, Hakimpur, Howrah Station, Ramrajatala Station and Joynagar as locations where these movements were recorded.
Trinamool Congress spokesperson Kunal Ghosh disputed these claims. He said residents are unsettled by the speed of the SIR process. He said the short timeline and the approach of the exercise have raised doubts. He also referred to BJP camps set up to guide people who seek citizenship under the Citizenship Amendment Act. He said legitimate voters should not go to such camps because it raises questions about citizenship status.
Officials at the Chief Electoral Officer’s office said the final voter list will undergo AI scanning to detect duplicate entries. They said AI tools are also checking misuse of photographs in forms. Facial recognition technology is being tested for future use. They said around eighty lakh enumeration forms have been collected and digitised by booth level officers.
