Eye on West Bengal? Why Bihar's special electoral roll revision has left Trinamool Congress jittery

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has criticised the EC over the Bihar SIR drive. (File: PTI)

The Election Commission of India's drive to weed out illegal foreigners from the electoral rolls in poll-bound Bihar has drawn some harsh criticism from Opposition parties for the poll body as well as the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led NDA government at the Centre.

The Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls in Bihar, the first such exercise to be carried out since 2003, has left the ruling Trinamool Congress in neighbouring West Bengal wary. The fear is that after testing the waters in Bihar, a similar pan-India exercise may only be a matter of time.

The BJP, which sees West Bengal as key to national dominance, has been unable to gain power in the state despite aggressive campaigns and a concerted push to register and expand its presence. The BJP has traditionally attributed this failure to the large-scale presence of illegal immigrants in the state with tacit support from the ruling TMC in order to bolster its votes.

In April, Union Home Minister Amit Shah alleged that the Rohingya and Bangladeshis who enter India from Bangladesh get voter cards made in Bengal's North 24 Parganas district. In 2016, Kiren Rijiju, the then Minister of State for Home Affairs, told Parliament that there were "about 20 million illegal immigrants from Bangladesh in India".

In 2004, then MoS Home Affairs Sriprakash Jaiswal said in Parliament that there were 12 million illegal Bangladeshis in India, with a majority of them concentrated in West Bengal and Assam. He was later forced to withdraw his statement after uproar by the two state governments.

The Trinamool Congress has consistently denied such claims. After the SIR was announced, West Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress chairperson Mamata Banerjee accused the Election Commission of "acting like the stooge of the BJP" in ordering the hurried exercise in Bihar and suggested that it may be a ploy to bring the National Register of Citizens through the back door.

TMC Rajya Sabha MP Derek O’Brien alleged that the decision to conduct the exercise in Bihar was taken after an internal survey of the BJP showed the party winning only "46-49 seats in the state".

TMC MP Mahua Moitra also claimed that the revision was the only way for the BJP to be competitive in the West Bengal elections. "This mass disenfranchisement of voters in West Bengal is their last fallback option in a state where their assessment is below 50 seats," she told The Indian Express.

Meanwhile, BJP insiders concede that the intensive revision of the electoral roll, that entails weeding out illegal voters and cleaning the voter lists, will be crucial to the BJP's West Bengal strategy.

The party, which attaches great importance to the state given West Bengal being the birthplace of Jana Sangh founder Syama Prasad Mookerjee, has countered the Trinamool's allegations.

"Mamata Banerjee’s assertion that the EC is targeting West Bengal by using Bihar as a pretext and invocation of the NRC are political tactics to create fear psychosis among the minorities," BJP MP Raju Bista said, adding that the West Bengal CM was worried more about "immigrant voters" whom the TMC had "imported and settled across various parts of West Bengal".

"She may be worried that all the illegal Rohingya and Bangladeshi 'vote bank' the TMC has created will be exposed through SIR," Bista said.

A look back at the history of the issue of illegal immigrants, however, reveals how a monster created by Mamata Banerjee has now come back to haunt it.

Allegations of illegal immigration and manipulation of electoral rolls in West Bengal began much before the recent political crisis in Bangladesh, or even the creation of Trinamool Congress which was founded in 1998 as a breakaway faction of the Congress party.

On July 21, 1993, Banerjee, then a Youth Congress leader, was injured while leading a march to the state Secretariat against alleged voter list manipulation by the then Left Front government. The Youth Congress had demanded that photo voter IDs be made mandatory to ensure fair elections with 13 Congress workers were killed in police firing against the protesters.

As late as in 2005 when the Congress-led UPA government was in power, Banerjee stormed the Well of the House and threw papers at the Deputy Speaker after Speaker Somnath Chatterjee refused a discussion on the matter.

However, by the time the BJP government came to power at the Centre, the tables had turned and Banerjee vehemently opposed the passage of the Citizenship Amendment Act that was aimed at providing citizenship to persecuted minorities, barring Muslims, from neighbouring nations.

Banerjee had effectively herself given the BJP an issue that it has now weaponised to use against her.