West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday intensified her attack on Union Home Minister Amit Shah, calling him “dangerous” and warned that she would sit on an indefinite dharna if even a single eligible voter’s name was excluded during the SIR exercise.Addressing a rally in Nadia district’s Krishnanagar, Banerjee alleged that Shah was directly guiding attempts to remove “1.5 crore names” from the voters’ list, and accused the Centre and EC of using the SIR of electoral rolls to unlawfully delete names of lakhs of eligible Bengali voters ahead of the 2026 assembly polls.
“The country’s home minister is dangerous. His two eyes send a message of disaster-in one eye you see Duryodhan, and in the other, Dushasan. He asks to tag the people of these bordering areas as Rohingyas and Bangladeshi,” Banerjee said, dramatically intensifying the rhetoric she has been using over the past week in her public meetings.
Banerjee alleged that the SIR exercise was being “weaponised” barely two months before the polls, selectively conducted in Opposition-held areas and supervised by officials “aligned with the BJP” and sent from Delhi.
“From Delhi, BJP is sending people to pressurise the DMs with the intent of removing 1.5 crore names from the electoral list. If any name is deliberately removed, I will do a sit-in protest. I urge you to do the same. If any eligible person’s name is struck off, I will sit on a dharna till it’s restored,” she said.
In her sharpest escalation yet, the chief minister issued an unusually strong call to women to “fight back” if their names were struck off, alleging that the revision process would be used to intimidate mothers and sisters during the polls.