Kolkata, Feb. 28 -- The Election Commission on Saturday published West Bengal's post-SIR electoral rolls, showing that nearly 66 lakh names are likely to be deleted since the exercise began in November last year while another 60 lakh have been kept 'under adjudication', in a sweeping churn of the voter list ahead of the assembly polls due in April.
The phased publication of the final but incomplete rolls marked the culmination of a 116-day statewide exercise that began on November 4, when booth-level officers started distributing enumeration forms. The draft rolls published on December 16 had already pared down the electorate from 7.66 crore to 7.08 crore, deleting over 58 lakh names on grounds of death, migration, duplication and untraceability.
With nearly eight lakh additional deletions recorded after hearings and scrutiny, the total number of SIR-linked omissions has now climbed to around 66 lakh, according to senior officials.
The figure could still shift as fresh inclusions under Form 6 and objections under Form 7 are processed and supplementary rolls issued.
Around 60.06 lakh voters have been categorised as 'under adjudication', largely on grounds of 'logical discrepancies' in their forms. Their fate will be decided by judicial officers in the coming weeks, potentially altering the electoral arithmetic further.
The scale of deletions and the large number of names kept under adjudication have turned the SIR into a high-stakes political flashpoint.
District-wise data underlined the scale of the shake-up. In Nadia, bordering Bangladesh, around 2.73 lakh names have been deleted, with the electorate dipping from 44.18 lakh at the start of the process to 41.45 lakh in the final roll. The electorate had gone down to 42,02,261 in the draft rolls.
Bankura saw a net reduction of about 1.18 lakh names. From an initial 30,33,830 voters in November, the draft rolls saw the number dip to 29,01,009.
After further scrutiny, around 4,000 more deletions were recorded, partially offset by fresh inclusions, leaving the final figure at around 29.15 lakh.
In north Kolkata, comprising seven assembly constituencies currently held by the TMC, around 4.07 lakh names were omitted during SIR, of which 3.9 lakh were removed in the draft stage and another 17,000 in the final list. The scale of fresh additions in the zone is yet to be officially ascertained.
Alipurduar in north Bengal recorded 1,02,835 deletions, with 11,96,651 names featuring in the final rolls.
The electoral rolls of Hooghly also witnessed a churn as the number of voters dipped from 47,75,099 voters at the beginning of the process to 44,40,293 now, reflecting a total deletion of 3,34,806 names since November, while 1,73,064 voters remain under adjudication, district administration sources said.
The electorate of the district had dipped to 44,56,224 in the draft rolls.
Hard copies of the updated rolls were displayed at SDO and BDO offices across districts, drawing long queues of anxious residents checking whether their names had been marked 'approved', 'deleted' or placed under 'consideration'. Soft copies were yet to appear on the designated EC portals and mobile application till last reports.
The commission maintained that the SIR -- the first intensive statewide roll revision since 2002 -- was a statutory clean-up aimed at ensuring a "pure and error-free" roll ahead of a major election. Of the 7.08 crore electors appearing in the draft rolls, around 6.4 crore have been marked as "approved" so far.
The political temperature, on the other hand, rose in tandem with the publication of the rolls.
Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had last week alleged that after initially deleting 58 lakh names, authorities were "quietly" removing more under the label of 'logical discrepancies'. She claimed the figure could touch 80 lakh but asserted that "another 50 lakh names cannot be deleted".
Reacting to the final publication, TMC leader Tanmay Ghosh alleged that "harassment in the name of SIR and hostility towards Bengalis has reached an extreme".
He warned of political and legal agitations if any valid voter's name was struck off, and accused the BJP of dreaming of victory through deletions, a strategy he said would fail.
BJP leader Jagannath Chattopadhyay, however, said it was not the job of political parties to assess who gained or lost from the roll publication, but to fight the election on the basis of the published list.
Beyond the rhetoric lies the hard arithmetic of West Bengal's closely fought elections.
In 2021, several assembly seats were decided by margins of a few thousand votes. In districts such as Nadia and North 24 Parganas, border dynamics, migration patterns and demographic shifts have historically influenced booth-level outcomes. A deletion or inclusion swing of even 2,000-3,000 voters in a tightly contested constituency can tilt the balance.
Political parties have already intensified booth-level scrutiny, with cadre pouring over printed lists, cross-checking names and preparing appeals.
For the TMC, which swept north Kolkata in the last assembly election, the 4 lakh-plus deletions in the zone are being viewed through the prism of urban turnout patterns. For the BJP, which has made gains in border and tribal belts in recent years, the focus is on how adjudication of the 60 lakh pending cases could reshape battleground districts.
Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Millennium Post.