West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee spearheaded a massive 3.8-km protest rally through central Kolkata on November 4, 2025, railing against the Election Commission's Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, which her Trinamool Congress (TMC) party has branded as "silent invisible rigging" aimed at disenfranchising Bengali migrants and minorities. Clad in her signature white cotton saree and slippers, Banerjee clutched a copy of the Indian Constitution as she led thousands of supporters from the statue of B.R. Ambedkar on Red Road to Jorasanko Thakur Bari, the ancestral home of Rabindranath Tagore, flanked by nephew and TMC MP Abhishek Banerjee and senior ministers. "The BJP wants to win polls on the basis of notes, not votes," she thundered, accusing the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Election Commission of colluding to label all Bengali migrants as Bangladeshi infiltrators, effectively implementing a backdoor National Register of Citizens (NRC) that burdens the poor with proving citizenship.

In a swift counteroffensive, Leader of the Opposition and BJP stalwart Suvendu Adhikari mobilised a 2-km "Parivartan Yatra" (march for change) from Sodepur Traffic More to Agarpara Tentultala More in the Panihati assembly constituency on the city's outskirts, demanding the full implementation of SIR and the deportation of all illegal Bangladeshi immigrants. Adhikari dismissed TMC's opposition as "unconstitutional", asserting that legitimate residents with parental birth and residency proofs have nothing to fear, and accused Banerjee's party of stoking panic to shield its voter base from scrutiny. He specifically rebutted TMC's linkage of recent suicides—including one in Agarpara—to SIR-induced fears, calling it a deliberate ploy to sabotage the process ahead of the 2026 state assembly elections due by March. "Those whose parents have residential and birth proofs in India need not worry," Adhikari declared, daring TMC to halt the revision legally.

The SIR exercise, rolled out in 12 states and union territories including poll-bound Bihar, requires voters to submit parental identity documents to verify eligibility, ostensibly to purge "fake" entries and ensure "watertight" rolls, but critics like TMC view it as a Hindutva-fuelled ploy to target Muslims and other non-BJP demographics, echoing the contentious 2019 NRC in Assam that left over 1.9 million stateless. Abhishek Banerjee has urged supporters to "confront and tie up" local BJP leaders demanding such proofs, while linking at least three suicides since the drive's September launch to the "terror" of potential deportation or incarceration for the undocumented poor. The Election Commission maintains its independence, insisting the revision enhances electoral integrity without bias, but opposition parties across India—from Bihar's RJD to Bengal's Left—have decried it as discriminatory, exacerbating fears tied to the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), which fast-tracks citizenship for non-Muslim refugees but excludes Muslims, potentially stranding them in detention if NRC-like scrutiny expands.

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This duelling rally spectacle underscores the intensifying pre-poll skirmishes in West Bengal, where TMC's incumbency faces BJP's aggressive infiltration narrative amid a state electorate of over 7 crore, with Muslims comprising about 27% and border districts rife with migration sensitivities. Banerjee's mobilisation, drawing parallels to Ambedkar's constitutional safeguards and Tagore's humanistic ethos, reinforces her image as a defender of the marginalised against Delhi's overreach, while Adhikari's yatra leverages the BJP's "ghar wapsi" rhetoric to consolidate Hindu votes in urban fringes. As SIR deadlines loom—with submissions due by November 25—tensions could escalate, prompting calls for Supreme Court intervention to avert disenfranchisement. The face-off not only previews 2026's battle lines but also highlights broader national debates on citizenship, federalism, and electoral fairness in Modi's polarised India.

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