West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has been vocally campaigning against the Special Intensive Revision of the electoral rolls. The Chief Minister has now appealed to the women voters to take up their kitchen tools as weapons to fight name deletion from the voters’ list. Addressing a rally in West Bengal’s Krishna Nagar, Banerjee said that women will lead this fight against the SIR.
Banerjee said that the BJP and the Election Commission are trying to snatch the rights from mothers and sisters in the name of SIR. She alleged that the Election Commission will bring police from Delhi during the polls and intimidate mothers and sisters.
“Mothers and sisters, if your names are struck off, you have the tools, right? The tools you use during cooking. You have strength, right? You won’t let it pass if your names are cut, right? The women will fight in the front, and the men will be behind them,” NDTV quoted Banerjee as saying.
The Bengal CM said she wanted to see who was more powerful—women or the BJP—and added that she does not believe in communal politics. “Whenever the election comes, the BJP tries to use money and bring people from other states to divide people,” she alleged.
Banerjee also escalated her attack on Union Home Minister Amit Shah, calling him “dangerous” and warning that she would stage a dharna if even one eligible voter’s name was removed during the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls.
Speaking at a rally in Krishnanagar in Nadia district, Banerjee said, “The country’s home minister is dangerous. You can see it in his eyes — it’s frightening. In one eye you see ‘Duryodhan’, and in the other, ‘Dushasan’.”
Accusing the Centre of using the SIR as a political tool ahead of the 2026 Assembly elections, she added, “If a single eligible voter is struck off the rolls, I will sit on a dharna. There will be no detention camps in West Bengal. They are so desperate for votes that they are carrying out the SIR just two months before the elections.”
Banerjee also said that West Bengal can carry out much of its development work without Central assistance.
“Even though the Centre stopped our funds, we still built 39,000 km of roads with our own money earlier. This time, we have added another 20,000 km, bringing the total to around 1 crore 1 lakh 83,000 kilometres constructed during our tenure,” she said.
Reiterating her firm resistance to the NRC and CAA, she declared that Bengal would “never allow detention camps”. She added, “There will be no detention camp in Bengal. No NRC, no CAA — we will never accept them. We will protect democracy and we will protect Bengal.”
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