West Bengal Chief Minister warns Matua voters on CAA fallout, accuses Election Commission of coercive SIR

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday, 25 November, launched a sharp attack on the EC (Election Commission) over the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, warning that Matua voters applying under the CAA (Citizenship Amendment Act) risk being “immediately delisted” if marked as foreigners. Addressing a rally before a march to Thakurnagar, she urged the people not to take extreme steps out of fear of the exercise.

Calling the recent deaths “linked to panic over SIR”, Banerjee said “human lives are too precious” and appealed to voters “not to die by suicide under the fear of SIR”. She claimed that 35–36 deaths, including suicides, were associated with anxiety around the voter revision process.

Her sharpest criticism focused on citizenship documentation in the Matua belt. Accusing BJP-backed groups of issuing fraudulent paperwork, she said, “They are cheating you. Certificates dated November-December 2025 say you lived in Bangladesh till 2002. This is a huge fraud.”

She contrasted these with certificates issued by the Ramakrishna Mission, which she said “never mention nationality”

According to Banerjee, applying under the CAA by declaring Bangladeshi origin would lead to being “immediately delisted as a voter”. She added, “If those who voted in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls are not genuine, the BJP-led central government has no right to govern.”

The chief minister alleged that SIR was being rushed “coercively within two months” before the 2026 polls, pointing out that the previous revision in 2002 took nearly three years. She also accused the poll body of becoming “a BJP Commission” acting on “instructions from Delhi”, and claimed the EC would use “AI as a tool for manipulation”.

Before the rally, Banerjee said her hired helicopter—booked for a 12.30 pm landing—was grounded without explanation. Calling the move “politically motivated”, she travelled by road and reached the venue around 2 pm.

Reaching out to the Matua community, she said she was “not here to ask for votes” but to assure them that “no genuine voter will be removed”. Concluding her speech, she said, “I am your ‘pehredar’, not a zamindar… We will fight this together.”