Bengal poll drama centres on voter rolls

THERE is a quiet desperation to the long journey from Delhi-NCR to West Bengal. Trains are bursting at the seams and those not getting a reservation are flying on borrowed money. Nobody is travelling to celebrate Pohela Boishakh, which marks the beginning of New Year for Bengalis on April 15. Instead, it's an election-focussed trip, with one intention: to vote on April 23 or 29.The voters are drawn principally from the informal sectors where women work as maidservants and men as small entrepreneurs or factory hands. But the anxiety in their demeanour and voice is unmistakable. They cannot afford to lose out on voting this time. "It's a question of life and death," said my housemaid of several years, registered as a voter in north Bengal.This is the first time in years that she is going back only to vote. All these years, her interest in the state polls was little more than cursory, confined to monitoring the trends and results on TV and checking if her "Mamata Di" (Mamata Banerjee, Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress Party chief) was winning.The Delhi-NCR region has been emptied of a substantial number of its workers drawn from the eastern state. They are spending big bucks to reach the polling booths in their destinations. They fear that their absence might lead to their names being permanently struck off the electoral rolls and, with that, of losing citizenship and facing the threat of deportation. But deportation to where, unless it is proven beyond doubt and dispute that the voter is a migrant from Bangladesh?In ordinary circumstances, the BJP, which is playing for huge stakes, might have organised the logistics to facilitate travel for Bengal voters of its choice, like it did in the Bihar polls. However, barring a report from Gujarat that said the Surat BJP organised four trains to ferry Bengali migrants, employed in the gold and diamond industries, in tandem with the local Bangla "samaj", there was no such information from anywhere else. The TMC has already alleged that Form 6, used to enlist new voters, was distributed to people especially brought to vote from the neighbouring Bihar.While this charge — a similar one was levelled by Assam's Opposition — has not been proven, a shocking fact hit both Bengal and the country on the face. It was the deletion of over 90 lakh people from the rolls who had applied for inclusion under the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) process. They were listed on the draft SIR rolls and believed that their enfranchisement was a formality.When the SIR exercise rolled out in Bengal in November 2025, what should have been a procedural endeavour to clean out the rolls metamorphosed into an endless saga of mass deletions, methodological fuzziness and a system that put the burden of proof on the very citizens it was supposed to enfranchise.Statistics reveal a large part of the SIR story. In December 2025, Bengal had 7.66 crore registered voters. In the Election Commission of India (ECI)'s draft rolls, released on February 28 this year, 63 lakh electors were dropped while another 60 lakh were forced to resort to adjudication by judicial officers.On April 6, in the final rolls for the upcoming polls, 27 lakh more names were knocked off, taking the total number of exclusions to 90 lakh (the figure was subsequently revised to 91 lakh). Bengal's electorate stands at 6.75 crore voters, significantly lower than the 7.66 crore on the rolls before the SIR kicked in.The last sources of hope for the still-to-be-enfranchised persons or the disenfranchised were the appellate agencies and, failing that, the Supreme Court. Reports from Bengal suggested that the "over-burdened" tribunals ended up leaving petitioners in the lurch, while the apex court — which allowed tribunals to accept fresh documents — refused to prescribe a timeline and said the authorities would formulate a fair procedure that could take a month, "that may take even 60 days." That is how things stacked up.Besides the TMC, every party in Bengal has opposed the SIR process, barring the BJP. What are the implications for the elections? It is useful to turn to data. As per the 2011 Census, out of a 9.13 crore population, Muslims are 2.47 crore (27% of the total).The highest number of deletions was reported from the Muslim-heavy districts of south Bengal, such as Nadia and Murshidabad, where it is now common to see people holding worn-out plastic bags packed with documents and queuing up before the tribunals to seek a fresh revision. In Murshidabad, 4.55 lakh were excluded from the 11 lakh who sought judicial scrutiny. Of the 183 seats in south Bengal, in 2021 the TMC got its biggest catch of 153 seats and the BJP, only 29. Is it surprising that a reduced Muslim electorate could foil the TMC's strategy to polarise voters?That is not the end of the story. It is not as though the SIR was allegedly targeted only against the Muslims. The Matuas, a Dalit sub-grouping, who migrated in large numbers from Bangladesh, constituted a dependable vote bank for the BJP once the Union government promised citizenship under the 2019 Citizenship Amendment Act to non-Muslim refugees from the neighbouring countries. The Matuas, who constitute 1.3 crore voters in 55 Assembly constituencies in south Bengal, voted for the BJP in the 2019 Lok Sabha and the 2021 Bengal Assembly polls, hoping to get citizenship rights.It has not happened. Worse, many of their names were struck off the electoral rolls, to the state BJP's discomfiture. The party's Matua leaders are trying hard to assuage the voters by helping them file appeals in the tribunals and fill in Form 6 to register as voters. In the meantime, the TMC worked overtime to ensure that its government's welfare projects reached the community effectively.In an overwrought election that will adjudicate Bengal's destiny for time to come, it is hard to put money on any one of the players. Mamata is virtually under siege from the institutions assigned to play the key roles. The moot question is: Will she cross the hump that stands between victory and defeat?

Bengal poll drama centres on voter rolls

The highest number of deletions was reported from the Muslim-heavy districts of south Bengal.

Radhika Ramaseshan

Bengal poll drama centres on voter rolls

The highest number of deletions was reported from the Muslim-heavy districts of south Bengal.

Radhika Ramaseshan

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