A seven-minute meeting in Delhi sparked another war of words between the Trinamool and the Election Commission on Wednesday, with Bengal’s ruling party accusing chief election commissioner Gyanesh Kumar of telling them to “get lost” and the poll panel serving an “ultimatum” and “straight talk” to Mamata Banerjee’s party over social media.

Derek O’Brien, Trinamool’s leader in the Rajya Sabha, was part of the four-member delegation that met the Election Commission in Delhi.

“I want to tell you what the chief election commissioner told us within seven minutes of the meeting. Get lost. This is what the chief election commissioner told the Trinamool Congress. We are the second-largest party in Parliament,” O’Brien said.

Sagarika Ghose, Saket Gokhale and the party’s new Rajya Sabha MP Menaka Guruswamy, who appeared before the Supreme Court on the SIR hearings, had gone to Nirvachan Sadan to air the Trinamool’s grievances against Bengal’s chief electoral officer, Manoj Kumar Agarwal, other poll panel officials and observers sent to the state.

“Across constituencies the commission has deployed observers whose backgrounds raise serious questions about their neutrality and suitability,” the Trinamool claimed in a letter to the CEC.

The party cited the examples of a police observer deployed in Malda from neighbouring Bihar, a general observer in Ballygunge, another in Malda’s Gazole and two in North 24-Parganas’ Bongaon Dakshin and Madhyamgram.

“The deployment of such individuals whether due to political association, pending allegations, or prior roles closely linked to political executives creates a reasonable apprehension that the electoral process is not being administered with the level of neutrality mandated under the Constitution,” the Trinamool said in its letter.

In a stern – and cryptic – post on X (formerly Twitter), the Election Commission seemed to deny the Trinamool’s allegations.

“ECI's Straight-talk to Trinamool Congress. This time, the Elections in West Bengal would surely be: Fear-free, Violence-free, Intimidation-free, Inducement-free and without any Raid, Booth Jamming and Source Jamming,” the post said in English, after a Hindi version of the same in the same post.

Trinamool’s Saket Gokhale demanded the EC release video footage of the meeting.

The Trinamul-EC meeting came a day after names of over 27 lakh voters were deleted after the adjudication process of 60.06 lakh names during the special intensive revision process, taking the total voters deleted in Bengal to around 91 lakh.

Chief minister Mamata Banerjee, who filed her nomination for the Bhabanipur Assembly seat on Wednesday morning, said the EC should have allowed these voters to remain on the electoral rolls.

“The case of 58 lakh voters deleted earlier has not been taken up. Some of them might be dead or duplicate. The voters marked under adjudication were genuine voters and should have been allowed to vote. We will take this up in the Supreme Court,” Mamata told the media after filing her nomination at Alipore’s Survey Building.