Kolkata, Nov. 28 -- The TMC will raise the SIR exercise and deaths allegedly linked to it in West Bengal during the winter session of Parliament next month, a senior leader said here.

The ruling party of the state has been accusing the Election Commission of imposing "SIR-linked inhuman pressure" on ground staff through compressed timelines and "unworkable deadlines."

The party claimed the accelerated voter-roll revision has unleashed fear, fatigue and fatalities among Booth Level Officers (BLOs) and citizens, and will question why West Bengal has been subjected to the most intensive scrutiny while several border states with similar demographic profiles have been exempted from the SIR, the leader said.

The TMC said it would seek an explanation from the Centre and the EC on the selection of states for the SIR.

The senior party MP said, "Why have Tripura, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland and Manipur, all bordering countries like Bangladesh and Myanmar, been exempted entirely? Why is Assam under a lighter Special Revision? Is the real intent to challenge Bengali identity and systematically prune Bengali voters from the rolls?"

The winter session of Parliament will be conducted between December 1 and 19.

Senior TMC leaders said the voter-roll revision, launched in early November across 12 states and Union territories, has been carried out in West Bengal with "extraordinary haste," triggering panic among citizens and placing an "unprecedented burden" on Booth Level Officers (BLOs), several of whom have reportedly died while juggling teaching duties and late-night enumeration work.

The party claimed that 41 people, including four BLOs, have died since the start of the process.

Families of some of the deceased have attributed their deaths to crippling deadlines, inadequate training, and the stress of the massive exercise.

"What should normally take two to three years has been squeezed into two months just to please political masters at the Centre," a TMC MP alleged.

According to official data, the West Bengal SIR is nearing completion, with 7.64 crore forms circulated, 82 per cent digitised, and 99.8 per cent of voters covered in the door-to-door verification drive. The final electoral roll is expected to be published on February 7, 2026.

But TMC leaders said the numbers do not reveal the human toll of the exercise.

Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Millennium Post.