Kolkata

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will visit West Bengal on Saturday to address a rally in Nadia and unveil highway projects, amid the heightened political tension over the ongoing SIR exercise in the state.

The PM will address the public meeting in Nadia's Taherpur, a Matua-dominated area.

The visit comes as the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress has mounted sustained opposition to the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, alleging that large numbers of genuine voters, particularly refugee Hindus, risk disenfranchisement due to it.

BJP MP Jagannath Sarkar, who represents the Ranaghat Lok Sabha seat -- where Taherpur is located, claimed that fear was being spread deliberately among the Matuas about SIR.

"We are hopeful that the PM's message would dispel those fears and canards," he said.

Chief Minister Banerjee has already led anti-SIR rallies in Nadia and North 24 Parganas, the two adjoining districts that share a border with Bangladesh and have a significant Matua presence.

In the draft electoral rolls published after the enumeration phase, 58,20,899 names have been excluded, reducing the electorate to 7.08 crore. Around 1.36 crore entries have also been flagged for "logical discrepancies", while 30 lakh voters have been categorised as unmapped -- all of whom are likely to be called for a hearing.

For Matuas, a Dalit Hindu community that migrated from Bangladesh over decades due to religious persecution, this exercise has revived anxieties over identity and documentation.

The PM will inaugurate and lay the foundation stone for two national highway projects worth around Rs 3,200 crore.

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He will inaugurate the 66.7-km-long four-laning of the Barajaguli-Krishnanagar section of NH-34 in Nadia district and lay the foundation stone for the four-laning of the 17.6-km-long Barasat–Barajaguli section in North 24 Parganas district.

The projects are expected to serve as a vital connecting link between Kolkata and Siliguri, boosting trade, tourism and economic activity across southern and northern parts of the state, officials said.