Mamata All India Trinamool Congress chairperson and former West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday demanded the immediate arrest of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar and called for fresh elections in West Bengal and other states where polls were held after the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls.
Her remarks followed an Indian Express investigation reporting that Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had formally objected at least 14 times over 10 months to decisions and orders on voter registration, deletions, restorations, Form 6 changes and centralisation of electoral-roll data - some of which they said were issued without their knowledge. The Election Commission has said SIR-related decisions were taken unanimously by the full Commission.
Banerjee said the report confirmed what her party had been arguing for months: that the poll process had been compromised. Speaking on Facebook Live and at a press interaction, she accused the BJP and the Election Commission of having “looted” the 2026 West Bengal Assembly election.
“It has now been proven that the BJP and the EC looted the West Bengal assembly polls,” she said. “There will be pan-India protests till Gyanesh Kumar remains CEC. He must be immediately arrested and put behind bars. The chair of the CEC is not for a person like him.”
She described the revelations as unprecedented. “This is such a scandalous story. We had never seen this in our lives. This Election Commissioner must be arrested. He has no moral authority to continue, and the BJP must see that they cannot destroy our Constitution. They cannot demolish democracy,” Banerjee said. She further alleged that partisan officials had been placed in the system and that Kumar had “misused the police and, in coordination with the BJP, they have deputed their own BJP-minded people across the system.”
Banerjee demanded re-election in West Bengal on the pre-SIR voter list and extended that demand to every state where elections were conducted after the SIR exercise and the BJP won. “Re-election must be held in West Bengal with the old voter list,” she said, adding that fresh polls should be held on the same basis in other such states. She also called for criminal proceedings against Kumar.
She appealed to the wider Opposition to close ranks. Banerjee said INDIA bloc partners had already spoken on the issue and would meet soon. She framed the campaign as a joint fight, saying protests would continue across the country until Kumar left office and describing it as “another fight for freedom, this time from the compromised CEC, and the BJP that has destroyed India.”
Other Opposition leaders, including Uddhav Thackeray and Arvind Kejriwal, separately demanded Kumar’s removal or arrest and, in some cases, fresh polls in states they contest. The BJP has rejected the charge of collusion and argued that deletions did not uniformly benefit the party. The political confrontation is expected to intensify as the INDIA alliance convenes and street protests are organised.
