The Trinamul Congress on Thursday accused the BJP of hatching a covert plan, in cahoots with the poll panel, of diluting the electoral roll in Bengal with voters from other states.

The charge assumes significance as the saffron camp has so far charged the TMC with manipulating the voter list.

On Wednesday, Trinamul chief Mamata Banerjee spoke about the possibility of manipulation in Bengal's voter list after explaining how this alleged malpractice swung the outcomes in the Maharashtra and Delhi polls recently. She vowed her party would not allow such vitiation in Bengal.

A day after Mamata's dare, the TMC leadership, representing both the old guard and the new, endorsed her allegation, justified the concerns and promised action.

"Without a transparent, thorough verification of facts, not one elector’s name can be added. No name should be added online. If that happens, we will hit the streets with the masses to agitate,” said parliamentary affairs minister Sobhandeb Chattopadhyay, before adding that he would personally visit the poll panel's office to hand over a letter from the party.

"We will not allow them to repeat Delhi or Maharashtra or Haryana in Bengal. We will tell the commission (Election Commission) that none of this can be done online… verifications, hearings, due diligence must be ensured, for any (new) name to make it to the electoral roll,” he added.

Sources in the TMC said that Mamata, who has been raising questions on the alleged manipulation of results at the counting stage through an allegedly compromised EC for a while now, would lead the party's protest on the role of the EC in the run-up to next year's Assembly polls.

She has already spoken to like-minded regional party leaders to make it a national issue, said a source, before adding that the TMC was trying to keep tabs on the BJP's "gameplan" of bringing in outsiders and getting them enrolled as Bengal voters.

"They can't do much even by adopting such unfair means... We established the BJP as outsiders in the last Assembly polls. This time, we will expose how they are trying to bring outsiders to vote against a party rooted in Bengal," said a TMC source.

The issue of electoral roll manipulation was brought to the fore by Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, who claimed last week that the number of registered voters in Maharashtra was more than its total adult population.

TMC leader Abhishek Banerjee echoed Mamata's concerns on Thursday, taking up Delhi's example.

“From June 2024 to January 2025, over four lakh extra people were enrolled in eight months. This had not happened in (Delhi) in the past 14 years,” Abhishek said in Diamond Harbour.

"The AAP failed to make people understand this issue and that was their shortcoming...,” he added.

"Overall, 4 to 4.5 lakh names were added to the voter list…. Let us not even discuss the Election Commission's role. We have seen their actions,” he said.

BJP leader Suvendu Adhikari questioned the allegations.

"Does she (Mamata) have any practical sense, despite being chief minister for 14 years?” asked Adhikari.

"Who is the registration officer for the electoral roll? The district magistrate (under the state administration)…. Does she have the slightest common sense?” he asked.

Adhikari and the saffron camp have accused the TMC of manipulating the electoral roll by adding fictitious names or illegal Bangladeshis. "Last year, we got 16 lakh duplicate names deleted from the electoral roll (before the general election)," he said."