Budget 2026: Mamata Banerjee slams allocation, moves SC against EC, CEO over SIR

KOLKATA: CM Mamata Banerjee, acting in her capacity as Trinamool Congress chairperson, has moved Supreme Court against the Election Commission and the Bengal chief electoral officer on the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral roll. The apex court has listed her plea for hearing.


The move comes ahead of Banerjee’s scheduled meeting with chief election commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar at 4pm on Monday. At the meeting, Banerjee will lead a 15-member delegation, which will include kin of people whose deaths have been blamed on SIR-related stress and voters who have been wrongly marked as ‘dead’ on the draft electoral roll published last month.




Speaking shortly after the presentation of what she called a “Humpty Dumpty Budget”, Banerjee said the “jugglery of words” and the “sound and fury” in Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s speech could not hide the fact that Bengal received nothing.


Without referring to her petition filed in the apex court, she accused BJP of weaponising SIR, keeping the upcoming Bengal assembly elections in mind.


“They will lose in Bengal. That is why they are weaponising SIR. I would appeal to them to fight democratically and politically, instead of using EC and other agencies, if they have the guts,” she told reporters at the Kolkata airport before leaving for Delhi.


Banerjee said, “Because of this (SIR), the opposition lost the elections in Haryana and Maharashtra. They (BJP) are following the same method in other parts of the country as well. I ask them to fight politically. We are ready to fight inch by inch. (Non-BJP parties) will win Bengal, Kerala and Tamil Nadu. In Assam, they (BJP) will lose.”


Indicating that she will take her SIR protests to Delhi, the CM said, “They (EC) have given us an appointment at 4 pm tomorrow. We will brief the press after the meeting. I am going to Delhi after a long interval. My MPs are there. As chairperson of the (Trinamool) parliamentary committee, it is my duty to meet them as well. I will brief the media regarding how they (BJP) want to destroy the country’s federal structure in the name of SIR.”


While Trinamool seniors did not elaborate on her Delhi schedule, sources said the CM may stay there till Feb 4, the day the apex court is likely to hear the SIR-related petitions filed by party colleagues and MPs Derek O’Brien, Dola Sen and Mahua Moitra. The CM also hinted that she may attend the SC hearings.


Banerjee is likely to be back in Kolkata by Feb 5, when the Bengal assembly starts deliberations on her govt’s vote-on-account in the election year.


While the exact contents of her civil writ petition in the apex court are not known yet, both EC and Bengal CEO are named as respondents. The SC website shows that the case was filed on Jan 28 night and registered on Jan 30. The status was shown as “pending”.


After filing her petition, Banerjee on Saturday shot off a letter to Kumar – her sixth since the Nov 4 rollout of SIR – questioning the poll panel’s intent behind the “illegal appointment” of 8,100 micro-observers for Bengal, who she alleged are manipulating voters’ data.