New Delhi/Kolkata: The Election Commission of India (ECI) published the first part of the final electoral roll for West Bengal on Friday, dropping 6.18 million names and keeping 70.46 million voters in the list after a special intensive review lasting nearly four months.
Certainly another six million people fell into the controversial “inconsistency” category, and their final status is currently being adjudicated by some 500 current and former judicial officers.
ECI published the final lists after the Supreme Court ordered it not to withhold their publication pending a final decision on the fate of those subject to audit.
West Bengal is the only state to have introduced such a requirement in the SIR exercise, which began in Bihar in June 2025.
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“The Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) of West Bengal referred nearly six million questionable cases to voters for adjudication after SIR,” a senior IEC official said. The official added that these names will only be eligible to vote if they are “cleared by the appointed judges and included in the supplementary list.”
Murshidabad and Malda, the two Muslim-majority border districts, have the largest number of cases decided by judicial officials. While there are 11,011.45 such cases in Murshidabad, Malda with 828,127 cases, comes in second, according to the district-level case list of judicial officers from the West Bengal Chief Executive’s Office.
The Supreme Court ordered ECI on February 24 to publish the final state lists as per the schedule on February 28, while continuing to publish supplementary lists after the disposition of these cases. So far, there is no clarity regarding the timeline for publishing these supplementary lists, which may complicate elections in the state.
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If none of the pending adjudication cases are decided in favor of the voter, the net pre-SIR to post-SIR deletion in West Bengal will reach 15.9%, the highest among all the states that have published their final lists and only lower than the 16.9% deletion seen in the UT of Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
If only half of judicial dismissals result in expungement, the state’s net expungement would be 12%, which is only lower than Gujarat’s figure of 13.4% among the larger states. If none of the cases lead to deletion, West Bengal’s 8.1% deletion would be the sixth highest among the 11 states/union territories where the SIR began on November 4 and is completed.
On October 27, just before the process began, the number of voters in the state was 76.64 million. The enumeration phase of the exercise – where all those who submitted enumeration forms were included in the lists at this stage – resulted in this number falling by 7.6% to 70.82 million in the draft lists. This number fell by 0.5% to 70.46 million in the final list.
The sex ratio remained unchanged at 956 women per 1,000 men, both in the draft and in the final rosters
188,707 people were added to the draft list through integration and change of residence applications, of which 182,036 listings were in the first category and 6,671 listings were in the last category. However, there were 546,053 deletions through Form 7, which is an application to object to someone being listed or to delete the name of someone already on the lists. This resulted in a net deletion of 357,346 voters between the draft and final lists.
The three districts with the highest deletion rates compared to the pre-SIR list are Kolkata, Paschim Bardhaman, and Darjeeling, with deletions of 25.5%, 13.3%, and 11.2%, respectively.
The districts that saw the lowest percentage of deletions are Borpu Medinipur, Bankura and Coochbehar, whose electoral rolls are now 3.3%, 4% and 4.5% smaller than in the pre-SIR rolls.
Jorasanko and Chowranghee in Kolkata and Howrah Uttar in Howrah districts remain the districts with the highest percentage of deletions, with the percentage of deletions standing at 36.8%, 35.6% and 28.5% compared to the pre-SIR list.
The districts with the lowest deletion rate are Sabang in Paschim Medinipur district, and Indus and Katulpur in Bankura district.
They saw net deletions of 1.4%, 1.9%, and 2.2%, respectively.
Overall, there are 82 advisory committees that saw a net increase in the number of voters between the draft and the final slate. However, only 32 of these countries saw growth of at least 0.5%, and only 5 saw growth of at least 1%.
These five districts are Mityaproz and Jadavpur in South 24 Parganas district, Sabang in Paschim Medinipur, Bidhanagar in North 24 Parganas, and Kasba in South 24 Parganas. Their voter list grew by 2.2%, 1.5%, 1.1%, 1.1%, and 1% respectively compared to the draft list.
The biggest shrinkage compared to the draft list occurred in Dabgram-Fulbari AC in Jalpaiguri district, and Bagda and Jagatdal in North 24 Parganas district. These adaptations experienced additional shrinkage of 5.7%, 4.6%, and 3.9% compared to the draft roll.
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“If a person’s name does not appear in the draft list, he can still apply for registration after filling Form 6. If a person’s name is there in the draft list, but does not appear in the final list, he can file the appeal to the district election officer and then to the state chief electoral officer,” a senior poll official said.
The Trinamool Congress has alleged that the BJP is taking away voting rights from people, though the BJP said the ruling party will not be able to cast bogus votes in the upcoming Assembly elections.
TMC leader Kunal Ghosh said, “The BJP is enjoying depriving Bengal, snatching voting rights from citizens and withholding funds from the state. They will not be able to hide their faces in shame after the election results are announced.”
Senior BJP leader and Union Minister Sukanta Majumdar responded.
He added: “Only time will tell how much impact the SIR will have on the elections. But one thing is certain: the TMC will not be able to cast false votes in the name of 2.4 million dead voters. We have specific information that the TMC was used to cast false votes against 60% of these dead voters.”
