West Bengal's Election Commission Unveils Post-SIR Voter Rolls Amid Controversy

Kolkata's Electoral Roll Update

The Election Commission (EC) commenced the phased release of post-Special Intensive Revision (SIR) electoral rolls in West Bengal on Saturday, with hard copies being displayed in districts like Bankura. As of the latest updates, the online availability of these lists on the official EC platforms and mobile application remains pending.

While the exact number of deletions from the draft rolls is still unclear, sources within the EC indicated that over 135,000 voters might have been removed from the Bankura district alone.

The newly published list will categorize approximately 7.08 crore voters into three groups: 'approved', 'deleted', and 'under adjudication'. The latter category includes names currently under review by judicial authorities, with their status to be clarified in future supplementary lists.

The SIR initiative in West Bengal commenced on November 4 of the previous year, involving the distribution of enumeration forms to voters. The EC took 116 days to provisionally finalize the process and release the final, albeit incomplete, list amidst political unrest, changes in document verification protocols, and legal disputes.

The draft rolls released on December 16 revealed a decrease in the electorate from 7.66 crore—based on names from the state's electoral rolls until August 2025—to 7.08 crore, with over 5.8 million names removed due to reasons such as death, migration, duplication, or inability to trace.

The second phase included hearings for 1.67 crore voters, with 1.36 crore identified for 'logical discrepancies' and 3.1 million lacking proper mapping. Approximately 6 million voters are still under review due to 'logical discrepancies' in their enumeration forms.

The Special Intensive Revision (SIR) marks the first comprehensive statewide effort since 2002, initiated by the Election Commission as a necessary cleanup ahead of significant elections.