NEW DELHI: West Bengal leader of the opposition Suvendu Adhikari on Monday sent a letter to Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, dismissing CM Mamata Banerjee’s “desperate lies” about the SIR exercise and her latest request to the Election Commission to halt it. The BJP leader said her concerns were “nothing but pure fiction.”Adhikari’s letter to Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar came two days after Banerjee wrote expressing concern over what she described as “serious irregularities, procedural violations and administrative lapses” during the SIR.In his counter-argument, Adhikari described Banerjee’s allegations as a “desperate attempt to sabotage a vital and timely democratic exercise.”“The SIR is not, as she falsely portrays, an ‘unplanned, ill-prepared, and ad hoc’ farce, but a meticulously orchestrated national initiative aimed at purging the system of duplicate, bogus, and ineligible entries that have inflated voter lists and undermined the sanctity of our democracy,” the letter read.Adhikari further accused her administration of attempting to disrupt the exercise.“It is clear as daylight that the Hon’ble Chief Minister’s outrage stems from the counterfactual reality: the SIR is proving devastatingly counterproductive to her party’s prospects in the upcoming 2026 Assembly Elections, as it lays bare the ‘extras’ – fictitious voters, ghosts of the deceased, and illegal infiltrators; that her Administration and Party Cadres have systematically shielded and thrived upon,” the letter further read.The BJP leader emphasized that the SIR had been implemented after “extensive nationwide consultations with comprehensive training modules disseminated to over 50,000 Booth Level Officers and Electoral Registration Officers in West Bengal alone.”He rejected the chief minister’s allegations of server failures and data mismatches during the SIR exercise.“IT systems, far from being ‘defective and unreliable,’ have processed millions of entries seamlessly, with real-time dashboards ensuring transparency,” Adhikari further wrote.He also accused the Trinamool Congress of attempting to disrupt the SIR by intimidating officials, orchestrating protests and spreading disinformation online.“The Hon’ble Chief Minister’s litany of grievances is not only factually inaccurate but a deliberate distortion designed to malign the ECI as ‘politically motivated’ and to manufacture a false narrative of widespread discomfort and disenfranchisement. In truth, it is her own Administration and Party machinery that have colluded to sabotage the SIR at every turn: intimidating field officials (as in the case of Electoral Roll Observer; Shri C Murugan) through mob vandalism, veiled threats and bureaucratic hurdles, flooding social media with disinformation campaigns, and orchestrating orchestrated protests to create an atmosphere of negativity and fear. These unholy acts seek to portray the ECI’s lawful diligence as harassment, when in reality, the Commission’s actions are safeguarding the franchise of genuine voters while weeding out the fraudulent. Such tactics are a shameful assault on Democratic institutions, and I urge the ECI to remain vigilant against these machinations,” Adhikari’s letter read.Responding to allegations of excessive verification and procedural gaps, Adhikari wrote that checks for “logical discrepancies” such as spelling or age mismatches are part of a gold standard verification process.He defended the appointment of neutral observers and the exclusion of booth-level agents from hearings. Adhikari further stated that these steps were necessary to prevent partisan interference. Regarding document deletions and rejections, he stressed that all removals follow strict due process under the Representation of the People Act, 1950, with appeals mechanisms in place.Adhikari urged the EC to continue the SIR “undaunted, fortified by the unwavering support of the democratic masses.” He further described the exercise as “not an assault on the Constitution but its truest vindication, purging the shadows that have eclipsed our polls for too long.”
What Mamata Banerjee wrote
Banerjee, in her letter to the Chief Election Commissioner, warned that if the SIR was allowed to continue in its present form, it would result in “irreparable damage, large-scale disenfranchisement of eligible voters, and a direct assault on the foundational principles of democratic governance.”She called the exercise “unplanned, arbitrary and adhoc” and urged the poll body to halt it if glitches remained unrectified.The chief minister highlighted the strain on Booth Level Officers (BLOs) and other frontline staff, claiming the process had been “crippled from day one” due to poor training, server failures, confusion over mandatory documentation and the near impossibility of meeting voters during their work hours.She said BLOs were being forced to work “far beyond human limits” while managing their primary duties as teachers or anganwadi workers, and cautioned that the credibility of voter rolls itself was at risk.
