West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari on Tuesday, 3 November 2026, accused Trinamool Congress (TMC) supremo Mamata Banerjee and Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi of actively working to protect illegal infiltrators, even as the Election Commission of India (ECI) and the Union Government move to purge them from electoral rolls. Adhikari made the remarks while addressing reporters in Siliguri, in the Darjeeling district of North Bengal.

Adhikari's Attack in Siliguri

Speaking in pointed terms, the Chief Minister trained his guns on Banerjee's recent speech at Ramlila Maidan in New Delhi on 1 November, calling it a political exercise devoid of public mandate. “Nobody invites her to any program these days, and not even at the inauguration of any Durga Puja pandal. And now she gave a speech at Ramlila Maidan and accused the ECI of vote theft. While the Union Government and the ECI are making all efforts to free the country and clean the voters’ list of the illegal infiltrators, Mamata Banerjee and Rahul Gandhi are making all efforts to protect them,” Adhikari said.

He further accused the opposition of obstructing the Centre’s Viksit Bharat 2047 agenda, framing the infiltrator debate as a direct impediment to national development goals.

Smriti Irani Joins the Offensive in Kolkata

Separately, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) General Secretary and actress-turned-politician Smriti Irani, who was in Kolkata on Tuesday, levelled sharper allegations against the previous TMC government. Irani claimed that during the earlier Trinamool Congress regime, illegal Bangladeshi nationals were deliberately allowed to settle in West Bengal and were subsequently enrolled as voters to serve as a captive vote bank for the ruling party.

“Now, after losing the elections in West Bengal, Mamata Banerjee is going to New Delhi to be a part of the anti-ECI movement there. As for Congress, it had been its habit to blame the ECI after every electoral defeat,” Irani said.

Bengal BJP Chief Questions Delhi Protest Strategy

West Bengal BJP president Samik Bhattacharya also weighed in, questioning why the Congress, Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)], and TMC chose to organise their protest in the national capital rather than in the state itself. “Mamata Banerjee, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury and Md Salim should have led a protest rally in West Bengal. Instead of doing that, the three forces are joining hands in New Delhi and organising movements there,” Bhattacharya said.

His remarks underscore a BJP counter-narrative: that the opposition alliance’s grievances over the 2026 West Bengal Assembly Elections lack grassroots legitimacy if they bypass the state where those elections were contested.

Context and What It Signals

The coordinated BJP offensive—spanning the Chief Minister, a national general secretary, and the state party president—comes shortly after Banerjee’s Ramlila Maidan appearance, where she reportedly accused the ECI of electoral manipulation. The BJP’s framing ties the infiltrator debate to voter-roll integrity, a politically charged issue in a border state like West Bengal with its proximity to Bangladesh. Notably, allegations of illegal Bangladeshi voter enrolment have been a recurring flashpoint in Bengal politics for over two decades, cutting across state and national electoral cycles. How the ECI responds to these competing narratives—and whether it releases any data on voter-list deletions—will likely define the next phase of this contest.