Kolkata10 April. West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s nephew and senior Trinamool Congress (TMC) leader Abhishek Banerjee on Friday attacked Union Home Minister Amit Shah for repeatedly raising the issue of infiltration in his election speeches in West Bengal. In this sequence, Banerjee also claimed that out of the 91 lakh voters removed during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) process of the voter list, about 63 percent are Hindus.
Addressing a press conference hours after Amit Shah released the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s 15-point manifesto for the upcoming West Bengal assembly elections, Banerjee said, ‘In the first list released in February, 58 lakh names were removed, then about 6 lakh more names were removed. Later, around 27 lakh names were removed from the adjudication list. Overall, around 90 lakh names were removed, of which 63% are Hindus.’
Lok Sabha MP Abhishek said, “The BJP has released a 15-point document, which they have named ‘Bharaoshar Showpath’. I expected the Home Minister to be the first to apologize to the people of Bengal for the kind of atrocities that have been committed on them in the last six months in the name of SIR. He talked about chronology and ‘locate,’ ‘remove,’ and ‘send back.’ ‘Apply’ is the first step in the process.”
Earlier, while releasing the manifesto, Shah said that the saffron party government in West Bengal will implement the policy of ‘detect, remove and deport’ against infiltrators. Voting is being held in two phases – 23 and 29 April – to elect the new government in West Bengal. Counting of votes will take place on May 4.
If seen, ever since SIR started, 91 lakh names have been removed from the voter list of West Bengal. The number of voters in the state has reduced by about 12% – there were 7.66 crore voters in October 2025, which has now come down to 6.75 crore. There were 7.34 crore eligible voters in West Bengal in the 2021 assembly elections.
According to an internal analysis of booth-level Election Commission data before and after the SIR by the Trinamool Congress, of the 91 lakh names removed, 57.47 lakh (63.4%) are Hindu and 31.1 lakh (34.3%) are Muslim.
Comments are closed.