The Election Commission (EC) on Saturday began publishing the post-SIR electoral rolls in West Bengal in a phased manner, with figures from Bankura district indicating that around 1.18 lakh names have been deleted since the process began there. This represents more than 3% of the votes in the region before the start of the special intensive review in the state associated with the ballot.
Hard copies of the updated lists have been put in place in districts including Bankura and Cooch Behar, news agency PTI said at 12:30 pm, even as the lists were not made available online on dedicated EC portals and mobile apps till the latest reports were received.
In Bankura, the number of voters was 3,033,830 when the SIR exercise began on November 4 last year; The number in the draft lists published on December 16 decreased to 29,01,009. After hearings and scrutiny during the subsequent phase of the SIR, about 4,000 more names were deleted. However, a few thousand new applications were approved under Form 6, designated for listing new voters.
As a result, the final electoral roll for Bankura, considered a district where both the BJP and TMC have equal political dominance, now stands at around 29,15,000, indicating a net deletion of around 1.18 lakh names since the start of the SIR, a senior official of the district told PTI.
Election Commission officials said the deletions were primarily due to death, migration, duplication and “untraceability”, while the additions were processed after due verification.
Reports from other areas are still awaited, PTI said.
The lists are being disseminated in phases across the provinces, and it is expected that supplementary lists will be released as pending cases continue to be adjudicated.
According to officials, the circular categorizes 7.08 crore voters, whose names appeared in the draft lists released on December 16, into three categories – ‘approved’, ‘deleted’ and ‘under dismissal/under consideration’.
Committee sources also noted that in parts of north Kolkata, nearly 17,000 names were found missing from the approved lists, adding to the political backlash from rival parties.
58,000 names were removed from the state’s draft lists
The draft lists published on December 16 have already seen the number of voters in the state shrink from 7.66 lakh crore voters – the figure based on names appearing in the lists till August 2025 – to 7.08 lakh crore, with over 58 lakh names deleted during the first phase of scrutiny.
The second phase involved hearings for 1.67 crore voters: 1.36 crore voters were flagged for “logical discrepancies” such as spelling errors and age mismatches, and 31 crore lacked proper maps.
About 60,000 voters are still being adjudicated, meaning their inclusion or exclusion will be determined in supplementary lists that will be released in stages.
Meanwhile, long queues were seen outside local election offices and internet cafes across the state, as anxious voters thronged the centers to check their names in the updated lists.
In areas like Bankura, North 24 Parganas and parts of Kolkata, printed copies of menus were put up on notice boards, attracting a steady stream of residents since morning. Many of them were seen scanning page after page of printed papers, some taking pictures with their mobile phones, while others sought help from officials to track their entries.
In many magistrates’ offices and subdivisions, voters waited in winding lines for their turn to check whether their names were in the “approved,” “deleted,” or “under jurisdiction” categories.
With updated menus not fully accessible online, cyber cafes reported a sudden increase in footfall. In many neighborhoods, small computer centers saw lines of people waiting outside, clutching voter ID cards and census cards, reflecting public anxiety and the high political stakes surrounding the review process ahead of next year’s House elections.
