SIR could turn into a double-edged sword for Bengal BJP

Kolkata: The stage has been set for the 2026 Bengal assembly elections, five months from now. Unlike in earlier elections, what occupies the center stage is not govt policies. Instead, an initiative by the Election Commission of India — special intensive revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, is at the helm, overshadowing all other issues.A careful reading of Article 325 of the Constitution leaves little room for debate that the Election Commission has the power to conduct SIR. Yet, the debate rages because the ECI didn't invoke its power for 23 years since the last SIR in 2002. All roll revisions in between were routine roll revisions.The question — why or why not SIR after 23 years — is the prop based on which politicians are weaving their own narratives out of a constitutional or administrative decision. The narrative on either end is unique because it takes the agenda beyond legality.For BJP, the process is nothing more than cleansing the electoral rolls, and for Trinamool, along with other opposition parties, the process is exclusionary. People have witnessed such a debate during the Bihar SIR. But such a debate couldn't undo the process.In Bengal, however, the scene looks a little different. Here the CM sees SIR as conspiracy, and not just that of the ECI. By doing so, the CM has strongly opposed this publicly and termed SIR as a "NRC in guise" prompting Trinamool leaders to campaign on the lines of SIR-NRC-detention camp.Bengal BJP netas, from Suvendu Adhikari to Sukanta Majumdar, offer another combative narrative along the ghuspetiya/ Rohingya line of debate. The problem with this narrative is that Bengal BJP needs the Centre's crutch to materialise it — central paramilitary forces in the event of violence over SIR, or the imposition of President's Rule in Bengal. This sounds quite natural for the Bengal BJP unit that doesn't have a presence in all the 90,000-odd polling booths and could not even field BLOs for the SIR exercise in 30% of the polling booths.But why is BJP hell bent on having elections only after the SIR in Bengal, or why are Trinamool netas opposed to it without even waiting for the SIR process to take off?Suvendu Adhikari has an answer. He says the 7% gap between votes polled by Trinamool and BJP in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls was because of bogus voters. Adhikari wants the SIR to happen in Bengal, to give the BJP a level playing field.Suvendu's logic sounds good as long as the strategy is on the drawing board. It may not pan out well when it comes on the ground. It goes without saying that the ECI will find many dead voters, multiple enrolments, voters who left Bengal to settle elsewhere accumulating for the past 24 years. All these might lead to deletions from the electoral rolls.But if elections are all about perception, Bengal BJP has to withstand the on-the-ground opposition from the would-be dropouts who will rally round the Trinamool and other opposition parties against the BJP, and this time more fiercely than ever.