The BJP will counter the Trinamul Congress’s narrative of “ghost” voters to ensure that the names of no Hindu or linguistic minority people are eliminated from the electoral roll while identifying dead or duplicate electors who allegedly benefit the ruling dispensation in Bengal in the polls.

The BJP has started an exercise from Mamata Banerjee’s Bhabanipur Assembly constituency to ensure that the names of its supporters remain on the voter list.

“We have already begun the primary work before visiting the doorstep of voters in Bhabanipur with the electoral roll to determine whether TMC leaders are eliminating the names of Hindu or non-Bengali voters in the area. We are cautious about Bhabanipur where we received a significant lead in five out of eight Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) wards against the TMC in the 2024 general election,” said Anupam Bhattacharya, the BJP’s south Calcutta organisational district president.

“Apart from Bhabanipur, we will also conduct the same exercise in the Port area of the city,” he added.

The BJP plans to conduct the drive on the ground in urban pockets, especially in Lok Sabha constituencies such as North 24-Parganas’s Barrackpore and West Burdwan’s Asansol, where the population of Hindu and non-Bengali voters is higher.

The TMC’s lead in the Bhabanipur Assembly segment was reduced to 8,297 votes in 2024 from 58,832 votes in the September 2021 bypoll that Mamata Banerjee
had won.

“The BJP will put its best foot forward to field a strong candidate in next year’s Assembly election in Bhabanipur as winning the constituency will ensure the party’s footprint in an area dominated by Mamata Banerjee,” said a BJP leader.

“The TMC plans to find out our voters and lodge a complaint with the Election Commission of India (ECI), claiming them as outsiders for the elimination of their names from the voter list. Even if anyone’s name is deleted from the voter list, we will ensure the reentry of the particular voter lodging a counter-complaint with the commission,” he added.

BJP MP Samik Bhattacharya said chief minister Mamata’s charge that the voter list was being manipulated was merely a ploy to pressure the ECI.

“We complain that the TMC has been winning elections with the help of duplicate and fake voters. We have a database to support our allegations. Now, the TMC has devised a plan to remove Hindu voters, particularly those from Bangladesh and linguistic minority communities,” said Bhattacharya, who is also the BJP’s chief spokesperson
in Bengal.