Nagendra Roy, a BJP MP from West Bengal, who lashed out at the ongoing Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls and suggested that those excluded from the voters’ list could be sent to detention camps until their nationality was determined, triggered a political storm after he described Prime Minister Narendra Modi, President Droupadi Murmu and West Bengal Governor C.V. Ananda Bose as “Pakistani” and “Bangladeshi” while addressing a gathering in the Sitai area of Coochbehar district.
The remarks, which caught several leaders of his own party off guard, were made in the context of Roy’s sharp criticism of the SIR exercise, which he portrayed as a process that could have far-reaching and punitive consequences for ordinary citizens, particularly those whose names might be struck off the electoral rolls.
Roy warned that deletion from the voters’ list could result in bank accounts being frozen and welfare benefits being denied, and he went on to claim that detention camps might be established to verify the origins of those affected, while accusing the officials conducting the exercise of being foreigners themselves.
While the controversy snowballed, West Bengal BJP president Sameek Bhattacharya refrained from commenting on Roy’s inflammatory characterisations of constitutional authorities, although he sought to distance the party from the detention camp narrative by asserting that there was no connection between the SIR and any such measure.
The absence of a direct rebuttal to Roy’s comments, however, did little to contain the political fallout.
The Trinamool Congress spokesperson Kunal Ghosh alleged that the saffron party was deliberately engineering a larger controversy to facilitate the deletion of a substantial number of voters through the SIR. The ruling party in West Bengal has consistently argued that the exercise is aimed at disenfranchising vulnerable sections of the electorate under the guise of routine verification.
The Special Intensive Revision has remained mired in controversy since it was announced by the Election Commission in June, initially being rolled out in Bihar, and critics have accused it of paving the way for the National Register of Citizens through indirect means, thereby fuelling anxiety among voters and placing excessive pressure on Booth Level Officers tasked with its implementation.
A report by the SPECT Foundation has added to the unease by noting that at least 33 BLOs across six states have died by suicide since the start of the exercise, although the report does not account for deaths in West Bengal, where Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has claimed that at least 40 government officials engaged in SIR-related duties have lost their lives.