Workers pluck tea leaves amid misty rain at a tea estate in Kalimpong, West Bengal. File | Photo credit: PTI
The Trinamool Congress on Tuesday (March 3, 2026) said thousands of adivasi tea garden workers and a significant section of the Rajbanshi people in North Bengal had their names either deleted or wrongly placed under “judgment” in the final electoral roll.
Describing the development as a political conspiracy by the BJP, the Trinamool Congress said the BJP’s influence was eroding in the tea garden belts.
“In the face of impending defeat, they now seem bent on suppressing the voices of the tea planters and tribal communities. We stand firmly with every Adivasi family and with every legitimate voter. We will fight this injustice through all available democratic channels because democracy belongs to the people and not to any party agenda,” the Trinamool Congress posted on social media.
Trinamool’s allegation comes after the release of the draft voter list of about 7.04 lakh voters in the state after the completion of the four-month SIR. The voter list contains about 60,000 voters who are under trial.
In January, the ECI allowed records of tea gardens and cinchona plantations as documents for SIR 2026. The BJP leadership raised a demand to include records of tea gardens and cinchona plantations in the SIR documents. The BJP has a relatively stronger influence in North Bengal than in South Bengal and is expected to do better in subsequent assemblies. Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee will sit on a dharna against the ECI on March 6 in Kolkata.
Former West Bengal Congress president Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury wrote to Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar that the election dates should be announced after the verdict on 60 thousand voters is finalised. Expressing deep concern over the omission of a large number of names from the draft electoral roll, the Congress leader said it was the constitutional duty of the Election Commission to ensure that no genuine citizen of India was deprived of the right to vote.
Published – 04 Mar 2026 07:06 IST
