The BJP on Monday accused the Mamata Banerjee government of using its machinery to remove the names of Hindu voters, particularly those who supported the party, from the electoral roll under the guise of a “ghost voter” drive across the state.

Leader of the Opposition, Suvendu Adhikari, said the block development officer (BDO) of Krishnanagar 2 in Nadia district had served notices on 98 Hindu voters.

According to Adhikari, the notices were issued following a complaint by a local Trinamul Congress leader that those voters were either non-residents or physically absent from their constituency.

The Nandigram MLA said he would stage a demonstration in Krishnanagar and demand the removal of the BDO for allegedly issuing the notices illegally to harass Hindu voters who did not support the TMC.

“I will demand that the Election Commission of India sack the BDO. We will also move to court if the BDO does not revoke these notices. I will also advise those 98 voters not to respond to the notices,” said Adhikari at a news conference at the BJP’s Salt Lake office on Monday.

“The BDO does not have the right to serve such notices. The BDO has crossed the line under instructions from (chief secretary) Manoj Pant,” he added.

He claimed that following Mamata Banerjee’s directive at her February 27 meeting at Netaji Indoor Stadium, TMC leaders had been actively working to remove the names of Hindi-speaking, Namasudra, and other Hindu voters who rejected Trinamool in consecutive elections — in 2019, 2021 and 2024.

The TMC’s rank and file have been tasked with scrutinising the electoral roll across Bengal after the chief minister instructed them to do so, accusing the ECI and the BJP of collaborating to include “outsider” voters’ names in Bengal’s electoral roll to boost Narendra Modi’s party’s chances in the state. Mamata also alleged that the BJP won elections in Maharashtra and Delhi with the help of fake or ghost voters.

Abhishek Banerjee, TMC’s national general secretary and Mamata’s nephew, has formed a parallel organisational setup to scrutinise the electoral roll repeatedly until the 2026 Assembly elections.

Since the TMC began its campaign against ghost voters, BJP leaders have claimed that the true motive was to remove their supporters’ names from the electoral roll, particularly in areas where the BJP performed well in recent polls.

The BJP’s Bengal minder, Amit Malviya, showed a set of such notices served on members of the Matua community — considered a BJP vote bank since the 2019 general election.

Malviya claimed in a social media post that Mamata, who opposed the implementation of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), was now targeting these voters for the removal of their names from the rolls.

“Now, the same Mamata Banerjee administration is exploiting their vulnerability by striking their names off the voter rolls. Here is a sample of notices issued to Hindu refugees, all from the Mathua community, in the Baghdad (SC) Assembly, Bangaon District—people who have lived in West Bengal for decades,” he wrote on X.

Malviya referred to the Assembly constituency as Baghdad (SC), while he meant Bagdah.

However, Mahitosh Baidya, general secretary of the All India Matua Mahasangha’s pro-BJP faction, said he was unaware that names were being deleted from the voters’ list.

“We have so far received no such complaint of deleting names from the voters’ list. But complaints of harassment have been received from some persons recently as they were summoned to state police headquarters in Lalbazar to prove their identity with supporting evidence. This has happened when they have had genuine Indian passports for over three decades. They were asked to prove their identity as Indian nationals.”

Trinamul’s Bagdah MLA Madhuparna Thakur, rejected Adhikari’s allegation.

“As far as I know, no such process of deletion of voters has begun. I have heard or received no such complaint. Let Suvendu babu prove his points with evidence, else it will be like other fake narratives he propagates,” said Thakur.

Tanmoy Ghosh, a TMC state general secretary, accused Adhikari and BJP leaders of giving a communal spin to the electoral roll issue.

“Suvendu Adhikari is now rattled because Mamata Banerjee and Abhishek Banerjee have exposed the conspiracy hatched by the BJP’s central leadership. As a result, he is now trying to create a false narrative with communal undertones. I can confidently say that with such tactics, the BJP won’t even secure 26 seats in the 2026 Assembly elections,” said Ghosh.

Howrah tension

Tension erupted in Howrah’s Belgachia on Monday when police attempted to prevent Suvendu Adhikari from entering the area recently affected by land subsidence.

A scuffle broke out between the police and BJP workers as authorities tried to block Adhikari and his associates from moving to the area. Despite the resistance, the Nandigram MLA reached the affected site and distributed relief materials to residents.

The land subsidence caused the collapse of several houses near a garbage dumping yard. The incident also triggered a severe drinking water crisis as a major stretch of the water supply pipeline was damaged. In response, the state government has been providing water through tankers and distributing packaged drinking water with the help of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation and nearby civic bodies.

Additional reporting by Subhasish Chaudhuri