The Trinamool Congress on Friday accused the ongoing special intensive revision (SIR) of voter lists of creating widespread fear, after a 60-year-old man was found hanging in Jalpaiguri district.
The ruling
party said the incident showed how the revision drive was causing distress among ordinary citizens, especially those worried about their names being removed from the electoral rolls.
Police identified the deceased as Bhuban Chandra Roy from the Rajganj area. According to officers, he had gone missing on Thursday night and was discovered hanging from a tree early the next morning.
His family told the police that Roy had been anxious for days after noticing that his daughter’s name was missing from the electoral rolls and that she had not received the required enumeration form. Police said he appeared to have been under severe mental strain, though a formal investigation is under way.
In a post on X, the TMC claimed the incident reflected a larger pattern of fear caused by the SIR process. “This is not a sequence of random misfortunes,” the party said.
A fresh tragedy in Ambari, Siliguri, and once again it bears the stain of a political project that has weaponised fear.
Sixty-year-old Bhuban Chandra Roy was found hanging from a tree, driven to despair because his daughter never received an enumeration form. This is not a… pic.twitter.com/vOJIdRIQKr
— All India Trinamool Congress (@AITCofficial) November 14, 2025
“”This is the predictable human cost of a process that was rushed, politicised, and rolled out without basic safeguards,” it added.
Rajganj MLA Khageswar Roy, who visited the family, said similar deaths had been reported in other parts of the state.
The TMC has earlier claimed that at least 11 deaths—seven by suicide—have taken place in West Bengal since late October, allegedly linked to panic over the SIR exercise.
The party accused political rivals of exploiting the situation and blamed the Election Commission for what it described as a poorly executed verification process. “Who benefits from this engineered panic? Not the people of Bengal. Not the families left to bury their dead. The only beneficiaries are those who seek to manufacture consent by frightening citizens into silence”.
In another post, TMC further noted, “Their pain reflects what so many households across Bengal are quietly carrying. When systems begin to create panic instead of protection, standing beside the people becomes the first duty for our workers and leaders.”
The Election Commission launched the SIR drive across several states, including West Bengal, as a door-to-door verification effort aimed at removing duplicate and deceased voters while adding new eligible names.
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