Mamata Banerjee on Sunday described as a “tragic farce” the Election Commission’s celebration of National Voters’ Day at a time, she said, it was “snatching away people’s voting rights” through the SIR at the behest of the BJP.

“Election Commission of India is celebrating National Voters’ Day today, and what a tragic farce that is!” the chief minister, a fierce critic of the rushed and shoddy conduct of the SIR in poll-bound states from Bihar to Bengal, said on X.

“The Commission — working as His Master’s Voice — is busy now in snatching away people’s voting rights, and they have the temerity to celebrate Voters’ Day! I am deeply distressed and disturbed by their conduct today,” she wrote.

“Instead of complying with the Hon’ble Supreme Court’s verdict and working as per rules and norms to provide and protect the democratic voting rights of people, ECI is finding newer and newer pretexts in the name of logical discrepancy to harass the people and try to deny them and take away from them their electoral rights!

“On behalf of BJP, their Master, they are busy in bulldozing the Opposition and destroying the foundation of Indian democracy, and yet they have the guts to celebrate Voters’ Day!!”

Mamata sees the SIR as a high-tech and opaque exercise aimed at disenfranchising millions in Bengal under Union home minister Amit Shah’s “dubiously favoured” chief election commissioner, Gyanesh Kumar.

National Voters’ Day is celebrated on January 25 to mark the birth of the Election Commission of India on that date in 1950.

At a Voters’ Day event in Delhi, Kumar said all democracies worldwide recognise that a clean voter list is the cornerstone of a strong democracy.

“To fulfil this fundamental objective, the EC has launched a special intensive revision to ensure that no eligible voter is left out and no ineligible person is included in the electoral rolls,” he said.

Mamata wrote: “ECI, you are torturing people today in an unprecedented manner. More than 130 persons have died because of your tortures.”

Mamata added: “Can you summon — the way you are doing — persons above 85, 90, 95 years of age, and even physically challenged persons to physically appear before you to prove their credentials?”

“The stress caused by this kind of illegal pressure is leading to series of suicides and deaths, and yet you are continuing to do this at the behest of your political
masters.

“You have made it NRC trial for citizens, including particularly those belonging to minorities, scheduled castes and tribes.”

The reference was to the process to update the National Register of Citizens in Assam, which has excluded 19 lakh people, leaving them liable to be detained and deported, and led to multiple suicides.

The SIR — for the first time tied to citizenship with the burden of proof placed on the voters — too has allegedly prompted several suicides in Bengal by panicky citizens and “overstressed” booth-level officers.

“Elections are festivals of democracy. But your partisan conduct and unilateral illegalities, dispatch of micro-observers to compound the harassment, your push
to people to jaws of death have been destroying our democracy. Today, you have no right to celebrate the Voters’ Day!” Mamata wrote.

Bengal chief electoral officer Manoj Kumar Agarwal, who carries out the commission’s orders in the state, said: “I will not comment on any of the comments of the honourable chief minister. She was referring to the Election Commission.”

Agarwal, too, has faced fierce criticism from Mamata several times during the SIR process.

Multiple BJP sources privately express apprehensions about the possible outcome of Mamata’s call for a popular upheaval in the Assembly elections against the SIR, which she has linked to an alleged onslaught on the Bengali identity and culture in BJP-ruled
territories.

Bengal BJP leaders confess to jitters about the SIR backfiring spectacularly on the party, by infuriating vast segments of harassed Hindus who had voted for it in recent elections while further consolidating the Trinamool vote base.

In her Voters’ Day message, President Droupadi Murmu said she hoped Indians would continue to vote — and wisely, shunning allurement, prejudice and misinformation. She lauded women for coming out and voting in large numbers.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged people to take part in democratic processes. Being a voter is not just a constitutional privilege that gives every citizen a voice in shaping the country’s future, he said — it also implies an important duty.