Mamata Banerjee is sharpening a weapon that the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi had first found.

Hours before Trinamool’s general secretary Abhishek Banerjee addressed party leaders in a virtual meeting to be held Saturday evening, Bengal’s ruling party claimed moral victory over the Election Commission’s decision to call a meeting with the CEO of UIDAI, the Aadhaar authority, and the Union home Secretary.

“First three statements. Now this meeting. This is just a face-saving measure. We will keep a hawk-eye vigil till the elections,” Sagarika Ghose, Trinamool’s deputy leader in the Rajya Sabha, posted on X (previously Twitter) referring to the Election Commission (EC).

The Narendra Modi government had in 2021 tweaked the Representation of the People Act, 1951 to enable linking of Aadhaar with the electoral photo identity card or EPIC, following which voters were asked to volunteer information on their Aadhaar card numbers.

The two databases are yet to be linked.

During their meeting with the EC brass earlier this week, a Trinamool delegation had raised the issue of “cloned Aadhaar cards” being used for enrolling into the voters’ list.

Asked whether the Trinamool supported the Modi government’s move to link the unique ID cards with EPICs, a senior Trinamul leader refused to answer.

“Our issue is different,” he said.

The Congress – read Rahul Gandhi – had first flagged the issue. But at the moment the heat on the EC over the voter ID cards is coming from the Bengal chief minister and her party.

The Trinamool has around 40 lakh more voters than the BJP in Bengal, going by the 2024 Lok Sabha poll results. For the BJP, it is important to reduce the gap by fetching the votes of the Hindu Left sympathisers. The Trinamool believes the saffron party is backing on “ghost voters” in the electoral rolls to sail through.

“Didi’s assumption has galvanised the party workers. They know we cannot take anything for granted. They have to ensure our supporters get to cast their votes on the polling day,” said a Trinamool leader.

A section of the Trinamool leaders also believes the noises made in Delhi will help the party divert attention from the anti-incumbency factors that could hit the party hard as the Bengal Assembly election, due next year, approaches.

The electoral rolls issue along with Centre’s allegedly starving Bengal of development funds would be crucial for Mamata to keep not just her flock but also her voters together before the Assembly election.

Post the results in the Haryana and Maharashtra Assembly polls, the Congress and Rahul Gandhi in particular alleged manipulation of electoral rolls, wrote letters to the then chief election commissioner and even raised the issue on the floor of the Lok Sabha.

While the Congress seems to have taken the foot off the accelerator on the issue, Banerjee, her eyes firmly set on a straight fourth term, has gone full speed ahead in raising the voters’ list issue in the people’s court.

“We made noises but unlike Mamata we could not sustain the issue,” admitted a Delhi-based Congress leader. “She seems to be going hard to paint the EC as the villain.”

Since accusing the BJP of manipulating the electoral rolls “with the blessings of the EC” by entering names of voters from other states and deleting names from the existing rolls, Mamata has been leading the battle on the photo identity cards from the front.

She had claimed the same modus operandi was used in Maharashtra, which went to polls last November, and last month in Delhi. In Maharashtra, the Congress which had swept the Lok Sabha polls was routed. In Delhi the Aam Aadmi Party lost power after a decade.

Mamata has ensured that her party leaders and workers are seen on the streets, going door to door with the revised electoral rolls, verifying each voter in every household.

Heavyweight leaders like Mamata’s close aide and Kolkata mayor Firhad Hakim and Udayan Guha, the north Bengal development minister, have led the scrutiny process.

For more than a week now the Trinamool has been trying to raise the issue in the Parliament. Apart from the other parties in the Opposition bloc, Mamata has also managed to bring Naveen Patnaik’s Biju Janata Dal on board on this issue.

The other opposition parties now are falling into line and have demanded the government hold a discussion on the issue on the floor of the Parliament in the on-going Budget session.

“There is a possibility that a discussion will be held on the issue next week. We are prepared for it,” said a Trinamool MP.