KOLKATA: Trinamool chief Mamata Banerjee on Thursday sought to revive the "

khela hobe

" spirit for the

2026 assembly polls

as she unveiled her party's plans to take on BJP with a focus on "

voter-list malpractices

, the Election Commission's lack of neutrality, BJP's use of religion in politics" and a call to weed out intra-Trinamool squabbles.
"Khela hobe but with more force," Banerjee told the 15,000-odd party delegates at a packed Netaji Indoor Stadium in the course of her 58-minute speech, alleging large-scale voter-card fudging in Bengal and naming specific voters from Murshidabad and South Dinajpur whose identity cards had been fraudulently linked to Haryana and Gujarat residents online.
"They (opposition parties in Maharashtra and Delhi) could not grasp it. We have been able to. The cat is now out of the bag. This is BJP's new operation," she added, attributing BJP's wins in Maharashtra and Delhi assembly polls to this new "manipulation".
Banerjee, shuffling through notes, alleged that a company - Association of Billion Minds - was sending people to Bengal under its "India 360 subsidiary" to manipulate voter lists in Bengal and pack them with outsiders with the help of "some data entry operators and AROs (assistant returning officers)".

"Cleanse the voter list," Banerjee asked Trinamool workers, exhorting them to work on "mission mode", as she threatened to take the protest to Delhi if EC continued to "shower BJP with its blessings". She formed a team of senior party leaders, including Subrata Bakshi and Abhishek Banerjee, to report to her every three days on voter-card manipulation. "This needs to be done now; else, there will be no election to fight," she said.
"I have examples of BJP's online fudging to ensure genuine Bengal voters are disenfranchised. Md Shahidul Islam stays in Murshidabad's Raninagar; his card is now linked with Haryana resident Sonia Devi. Raninagar's Md Ali Hossain's card is linked Manjit from Haryana. Who will vote in Bengal then: locals or Haryana residents?" she asked. "Do you understand the game? They have fudged Aadhaar details to manipulate voters' cards."
Mamata Banerjee told 1,500-odd TMC delegates assembled at Netaji Indoor Stadium on Thursday that BJP was engaging in "online fudging" to disenfranchise genuine voters. "So, one voter card is now linked to multiple people in Haryana, Punjab and Rajasthan and Bihar. They will be brought here by train. Taslim Mian in Gangarampur has his card linked to Ahmedabad's Jiggesh Madvana," she alleged.
"I used to respect the EC, I still do. But do you know who the new (chief) election commissioner is? He was a departmental secretary (cooperation) to the Union home minister. This departmental secretary has now been made the CEC. They have filled the EC with BJP men. We say with pride that we are the largest democracy. But is it true?" she wondered.
"This is a challenge. Do you accept it? Will you fight? Will you respond?"she asked her audience, telling them that BJP would be wiped out between 2027 and 2029.
Banerjee then focused on BJP's second ploy: the use of investigating agencies. "The agencies will work overtime as the polls draw near. They suddenly realise that this TMC neta needs to be charge-sheeted, that one needs to be branded a thief, this one needs to be jailed. You have put so many behind bars. But how many charges have they been able to prove? Don't you have any shame?" she added.
"All our phones are being tracked. We are taunted (on social media). What you hear is not always my voice, it may be AI-generated. Calls are being made with my display picture, modulating my voice. Cross-check whether it is me or not. These are trying times and BJP is exploiting it," she said.
"Bengal's culture is under threat. The inclusivity of Ramakrishna is under threat. They are making us forget Vivekananda's Hinduism, they are defaming Hinduism by importing a narrative. BJP is the new saffron comrade: saffron on the exterior, red inside," Banerjee said, seeking to present BJP as the new CPM.
She also flagged the issue of party infighting and stressed that the party symbol was above any leader. "The party symbol is above everything. I have been keeping track on Facebook and X on how some people are claiming themselves to be followers of this dada and that neta. Remember your only neta is joraphool (the TMC symbol)," she said.
Banerjee also told party members to cooperate with I-PAC when it conducts field surveys. "This is not PK's (Prashant Kishor's) I-PAC. He works at a different place and has even formed another party. There is a new team here. There has to be cooperation," she added.