Trinamool Congress MP Derek O’Brien on Sunday reignited the Opposition’s allegations around electoral malpractice, calling it “Silent Invisible Rigging” or SIR.

“The SIR (Silent Invisible Rigging) vote chori is a subject that can easily be discussed in both Houses. BJP scared & are disrupting. From Monday August 4 we will give the shaky Modi coalition free tutorials in Parliament rules & procedure to teach them how it can be discussed,” O’Brien wrote on X.

Earlier on Sunday, senior Congress leader P. Chidambaram alleged that the EC is attempting to change the electoral character and patterns of states, calling it an “abuse of powers” that must be resisted politically and legally.

In a post on X, he said, “While 65 lakh voters are in the risk of being disenfranchised in Bihar, reports of 'adding' 6.5 lakh persons as voters in Tamil Nadu is alarming and patently illegal. Calling them 'permanently migrated' is an insult to the migrant workers and a gross interference in the right of the electorate of Tamil Nadu to elect a government of its choice.”

“Why should the migrant worker not return to Bihar or his/her home state to vote in the State Assembly election, as they usually do? Does not the migrant worker return to Bihar at the time of the Chhath puja festival? A person to be enrolled as a voter must have a fixed and permanent legal home. The migrant worker has such a home in Bihar (or another state). How can he/she be enrolled as a voter in Tamil Nadu?” he said.

TMC national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee on July 30 said, “This SIR is not Special Intensive Revision, it is ‘Silent Invisible Rigging’ that the EC is doing at the behest of the BJP... if even one name is removed from Bengal, they will see what happens.”

Banerjee has been leading the party’s protests in Delhi, demanding a debate on the floor of Parliament and a united Opposition stand on the matter.

Other TMC MPs, including Mahua Moitra and Kakoli Ghosh Dastidar, have questioned the removal of eligible voters, calling the exercise a “dark shadow on our democracy.”

Chief minister Mamata Banerjee has accused the BJP and the EC of planning to exclude Bengali voters through a similar exercise in West Bengal. She said such moves would not be allowed in the state and accused the BJP of using the EC for political targeting.

TMC’s Sagarika Ghose described the ongoing revision as an exclusionary rather than inclusive exercise. She accused the BJP of conspiring against Bengal and using the EC for “nasty politics.”

With the monsoon session underway, TMC has stepped up its campaign inside and outside Parliament, calling the voter list changes "vote chori".