‘Vote chori’ and SIR pitch: Why Mamata Banerjee’s ‘street fight’ scores over Rahul Gandhi’s yatra politics | India News
Mamata Banerjee and her Trinamool Congress has unleashed an all-out offensive against the Election Commission over the process of Special Intensive Revision (SIR) ahead of upcoming assembly elections in the state. True to her style, Mamata has led this agitation from the front and has mobilised the entire party cadre to fight the changes in the voter list. Mamata is not new when to this aggressive brand of politics. Her entire political career has seen Mamata taking to the streets to fight her political battles. SIR which struggled to dominate elections in Bihar has become the core issue in Bengal. Here’s what makes Mamata different from most of the opposition leaders. July 21, 1993Mamata Banerjee, then a Congress leader in West Bengal, was leading a march towards the Writers’ Building in Kolkata. The protest was directed against the Left Front government led by Jyoti Basu, over alleged manipulation of electoral rolls. Her demand was specific: the introduction of photo identity cards for voters to curb what the opposition described at the time as “scientific rigging”.
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The protest escalated when police opened fire on demonstrators. Thirteen Congress workers were killed. Banerjee was assaulted by the police, removed from the Writers’ Building complex, and sustained serious injuries.
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The episode was not isolated. In another instance, she sat on a dharna outside the chief minister’s residence with a rape survivor, demanding action from the Left government. The protest ended with her being heckled and forced out.
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More than three decades later, similar allegations have returned, now framed as “vote chori” and linked to exercises such as the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of voter lists.What has differed, then and now, is not the nature of the accusation, but how political leaders have responded once it was made. That difference is visible in how the opposition’s INDIA bloc led by Rahul Gandhi and RJD’s Tejashwi Yadav handled the issue in Bihar after last year’s assembly election, and how Mamata Banerjee is positioning herself in West Bengal ahead of upcoming polls. Across these moments, the accusation has travelled far less than the response: while others have raised the charge from podiums and press rooms, Banerjee has repeatedly chosen to respond through public, on-ground action.What happened in Bihar?In Bihar, the opposition’s approach to the “Vote Chori” narrative began with momentum but proved difficult to sustain.Take the run-up to the recent Bihar assembly elections. Rahul Gandhi launched the Voter Adhikar Yatra, a campaign to highlight concerns relating to the Election Commission’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls.The early leg of the campaign drew noticeable response. At stop after stop along the yatra route, the chant “Vote chor, gaddi chod” echoed. It gave the Congress-led Mahagathbandhan a unifying rhythm. The crowds in urban centres and politically active pockets were visible, vocal, and angry. For a moment, it looked like the opposition had found a narrative that cut through the usual caste arithmetic.But then, the momentum hit a wall.On the eve of the first phase of polling, Rahul Gandhi attempted to escalate the charge. In a high-decibel press conference, he released what he termed the “H-Files”, a dossier alleging that the Election Commission had acted in ways that systematically favoured the NDA. “The Election Commission is not doing its job,” Gandhi declared, warning that the democratic process was being compromised from the inside.
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The move generated headlines, but it did not materially alter the campaign on the ground.As the voting actually began, the Voter Adhikar Yatra failed to translate into a broader movement. The “H-Files” remained largely confined to dominated prime time news channels but failed to become rallying point for voters. And then came the silence.In the most crucial phase of the election — the final stretch where undecided voters are swung — the Congress leadership’s physical presence almost vanished. While Prime Minister Narendra Modi and home minister Amit Shah were addressing multiple rallies across the state, Rahul Gandhi was absent from the Bihar campaign trail for extended periods.There were no rallies. No roadshows. Not even virtual appearances.In some areas, Gandhi’s image quietly disappeared from INDIA bloc posters, according to local party workers, as candidates recalibrated their campaign material in the closing phase. When the results came out, the Congress registered one of its weaker performances in recent Bihar elections, limiting the Mahagathbandhan’s overall tally.Crucially, in the weeks leading up to the election — when the “vote chori” allegations were at their sharpest — there was no sustained attempt to take the issue to the street. There were no prolonged sit-ins near election offices. The allegations remained largely on social media and in passing remarks. The Bengal modelCross the border into West Bengal. With assembly elections approaching in the state, the issue of SIR and “vote chori” is a campaign issue that has been very publicly taken by chief minister Mamata Banerjee. While the Bihar campaign relied heavily on press conferences and documentation, Banerjee has chosen to place herself at the centre of unfolding confrontations.Take the events of January 9, 2026.When the Enforcement Directorate (ED) raided the offices of I-PAC (Indian Political Action Committee) in Kolkata, the expected political response would have been statements and briefings.Mamata Banerjee flipped the script.Within hours of the raid beginning, she arrived at the I-PAC office, walked past central forces and entered the premises. She remained there as the searches continued, with the confrontation unfolding in full public view, repeatedly questioning the action.Holding the documents herself, Banerjee addressed the media and explicitly linked the raids to the SIR controversy, alleging that after efforts at “deletion of voters” had not succeeded, agencies were now attempting to access what she described as the party’s election strategy material.
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Reacting sharply, she questioned the role of the ED and Union home minister Amit Shah. “Is it the duty of the ED or Amit Shah to collect the party’s hard disk and candidate list?” she asked. “What will be the result if I raid the BJP party office?”The Enforcement Directorate later approached the Supreme Court, alleging interference during the searches and claiming that Banerjee had entered raid locations and taken away what it described as “key” evidence, including documents and electronic devices — a charge the chief minister has denied. The older patternThis instinct to physically insert herself into moments of conflict is not new to the 2026 campaign. It reflects a pattern in Mamata Banerjee’s political conduct, visible across decades.In 2021, weeks after the Trinamool Congress swept the assembly elections, the CBI arrested four senior party leaders, including two serving ministers, in connection with the Narada sting case. Banerjee drove to the CBI office at Nizam Palace shortly after the arrests and remained there for nearly six hours, challenging the action and insisting that if arrests were to be made, she should be taken as well.
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Outside, thousands of Trinamool supporters gathered, and the CBI later sought virtual production of the accused, citing law-and-order concerns.Earlier in 2006, during the Singur land acquisition dispute, Mamata took the matter straight to the highway. She undertook a 26-day hunger strike opposing the Left Front government’s decision to acquire farmland for the Tata Nano project. The protest kept the issue alive in public discourse until it became a central political fault line. In 2008, she also physically blocked sections of the Durgapur Expressway near the factory site.Us vs themIn Bihar, the “Vote Chori” narrative remained largely a campaign issue. In West Bengal, it has been introduced earlier and pursued more visibly. Mamata uses every raid, every notice, and every revision of the voter list to reinforce the “us vs. them” siege mentality.Unlike Singur, this phase of mobilisation has not relied solely on blockades. It has also focused on neighbourhood-level engagement. Across West Bengal, the Trinamool Congress set up “May I Help You” camps, where party workers were directed to ‘actively work’ to assisted voters during the SIR process.Banerjee reiterated that she would never allow any detention camp in Bengal or any genuine voter to be deported. The chief minister projected herself to be the “protector”.
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She has also sought to frame the exercise as a humanitarian concern. At the launch of a book she said she had written on alleged harassment faced by electors during SIR hearings, she claimed that at least 110 people had died due to stress linked to the exercise.“I have written 153 books,” she said. “Nine more will be published in this book fair… One of the books is a collection of 26 poems on SIR, which will come out in the year 2026.”She used her own life as an example to target the Election Commission’s SIR exercise.She went further, using humor and history to highlight the absurdity of the process. “If I write Mamata Banerjee in English and Mamata Bandopadhyay in Bengali, my name will be deleted. It’s like Rabindranath Thakur and Rabindranath Tagore,” she said. “Someone was asked how five children can have the same parents. ‘Hum Do, Hamare Do’ is a new concept; it was not the case earlier. We don’t even know when our parents were born. We were born at home,” she added, before dropping a final anecdotal anchor: “Even Atal Bihari Vajpayee once told me that he was not born on December 25.” She made the “Vote Chori” narrative not about the theft of a vote, but about the theft of identity.Two states, two responses In Bihar, the “vote chori” charge surfaced through campaigns, press conferences and post-poll claims, but struggled to sustain itself as a public action once voting began. In West Bengal, similar concerns have been raised earlier, repeatedly, and in full public view — through appearances, protests and neighbourhood-level engagement ahead of upcoming elections. In West Bengal, Banerjee has sought to keep disputes over electoral processes out of closed rooms and in public view, responding to institutional actions with visible engagement. Whether that strategy ultimately translates into electoral outcomes will only be known once voters cast their ballots.
