‘Indian Muslims no longer fear SIR, did not fall in Mamata’s trap’: West Bengal LoP Suvendu Adhikari

Leader of Opposition in West Bengal Assembly and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLA Suvendu Adhikari on Monday (November 17, 2025) claimed that the Indian Muslims, particularly of West Bengal, have not ‘fall in Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s trap’ and have accepted the Special Intensive Revision of the State’s electoral rolls ‘as an exercise, and not a political matter.’

“Mamata Banerjee failed to instigate fear this time, the way she did during the passage of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). After the distribution of enumeration forms, Indian Muslims have realised they have nothing to fear. They have understood SIR is not a political matter, but an exercise that has happened in the country multiple times before,” Mr Adhikari said.

In a presentation to local press persons at Kolkata’s BJP Party Office on Monday (November 17, the LoP also displayed alleged instances of duplicate voters. Earlier, a delegation of BJP comprising Mr Adhikari submitted hard copies and digital evidence of over 13 lakh ‘multiple duplicate voters’ in West Bengal’s voters’ lists. 

“We have submitted names of 13.25 duplicate voters, at least half of them will get deleted… In case of dead voters, we have found a minimum of 50 to 150 dead voters in each of 20 polling booths in 20 assembly constituencies,” the BJP MLA from Nandigram said.

On Monday (November 17), Mr Adhikari also showed visuals of people who he claimed were illegal Bangladeshi immigrants allegedly ‘fleeing’ West Bengal and crossing the international border to reach Bangladesh after the announcement of SIR.

“This is the exodus of illegal immigrants from Bangladesh… They are fleeing from Swarupnagar, Hakimpur, Howrah Station, Ramrajatala station. In Joynagar, we found them along a three-kilometer stretch adjoining the canal,” the LoP said.

Trinamool Congress spokesperson responded to Mr Adhikari’s claims saying that the people of West Bengal are severely disgruntled with how the SIR is being carried out in the State.

“The ongoing SIR in West Bengal has pushed several people into uncertainty. The BJP has realised that the people of this State are extremely dissatisfied with how SIR is being carried out in the State. The exercise is being done in a very short time, with a motivated and certain outlook in mind,” Mr Ghosh said.

He referred to camps being organised across the State by the saffron party to assist ‘Bangladeshi refugees’ to apply for citizenship under the CAA, and consequently find their names in the final electoral roll of the State in the completion of SIR.

“Why are they asking people to turn up at CAA camps? Legitimate voters should not have to go to such camps. And if they do, it is an open declaration that the person is not an Indian citizen to begin with, and it would leave them in dire trouble. They would not last a second longer on India soil if they go to a CAA camp,” the Trinamool leader said.

AI scans for duplicate detection 

Meanwhile, sources at the office of the Chief Electoral Officer of West Bengal said that the fresh voter list published after the completion of the SIR process is likely to be scanned by artificial intelligence (AI) to identify duplicate voters in the list. AI is also being used to detect the misuse of electors’ photographs in enumeration forms. 

The sources further said that facial recognition technology is also in the works for detection of duplicate electors. 

So far, around 80 lakh enumeration forms have been collected from electors and digitised through the mobile application by booth-level officers (BLOs).