TMC accuses CEC of ‘blood on his hands’, claims 40 SIR-related deaths in Bengal

Ten fiery Trinamool Congress MPs marched into the Election Commission headquarters in Delhi today and delivered a blistering attack on the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of voter lists in West Bengal. Led by Derek O’Brien, Kalyan Banerjee, Shatabdi Roy, Mahua Moitra and others, the delegation told Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar point-blank that the “blood of teachers and BLOs and citizens who died from inhuman pressure” stains his hands. Emerging from the meeting, the MPs holds an explosive press conference, accusing the EC of pushing an unrealistic two-month deadline that has already claimed several lives through stress, heart attacks and suicides among overworked Booth Level Officers—mostly school teachers.

The MPs fired five sharp questions the Commission could not answer satisfactorily: Why is SIR being forced only on Bengal and not on border states like Tripura, Mizoram or Manipur? Why was the same voter list considered perfectly fine for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls and three recent state elections, yet suddenly “unreliable” now? Is the real aim to delete genuine Bengali voters under the pretext of removing fake ones? They demanded to know who will take responsibility for the deaths and mental trauma caused by lack of training, broken servers and impossible targets.

Derek O’Brien declared the entire exercise “politically motivated” and aimed ahead of the 2026 assembly polls. Mahua Moitra and Dola Sen repeated the chilling questions: “Doesn’t the blood of these teachers stick to the CEC’s hands?” Back in Kolkata, the party has vowed to escalate the fight on the streets and in Parliament if the disciplinary SIR timeline is not extended and proper support given to BLOs. With every passing day bringing fresh reports of exhausted teachers falling sick or worse, what began as a routine voter-list cleanup has snowballed into Bengal’s biggest political battle before the 2026 elections.