10 of the 152 constituencies in West Bengal that voted on April 23 are likely to see a decline in turnout in absolute terms compared to the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, although the decline in only one constituency is likely to be more than the margin of victory in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, according to HT’s preliminary calculations.
This is interesting because turnout, in absolute terms, does not typically occur in a state with a growing adult population.
The 10 districts are: Matigara Naxalbari, Vansidwa and Siliguri in Darjeeling district; Dabgram-Phulbari in Jalpaiguri district; English Bazaar in Malda; Bhagabangula, Farakka, Lalgola, and Samsirganj in Murshidabad; and Kharagpur Sadar in Paschim Medinipur.
None of these councils witnessed a participation rate of less than 88.7% in these elections. In two of these advisory committees, the absolute decline in the number of voters between 2024 and 2026 was predetermined because the number of voters in 2026 itself fell below the number of voters in 2024.
The absolute turnout in these councils is likely to have declined the most in Samserganj (18.9%), followed by Kharagpur Sadar (4.7%), Lalgola (4.6%), Dapgram-Phulbari (4.0%), Fansiduwa (3.1%), Bhagabangula (2.1%), Varka (1.7%), English Bazar (0.9%), Siliguri (0.5%), and Matigara Naxalbari (0.2%).
Four of these councils – Samsarganj, Lajola, Bhagapanjula and Farakka – elected a Muslim member in every council election between 2011 and 2021. Five of them are located in counties with a Muslim population of 50% or more according to 2011 Census data; The rest are in areas where the Muslim population was less than 12% in the 2011 census.
Only the drop in Samserganj is more than the margin of victory in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. The Congress led this advisory committee in 2024. Overall, six of these 10 advisory committees were led by the BJP, four by the Congress, and only one by the Trinamool Congress in 2024. The BJP led Kharagpur Sadar, Dapgram-Phulbari and Vansidwa; English Bazar, Siliguri and Matigara Naxalbari. He led the Congress in Lalgola and Farakka, except Samsirganj. TMC Bhagabangola led AC.
Certainly, these numbers should be read with caution. The Election Commission of India (ECI) has only published the voter turnout for the 2026 elections. Hizb ut Tahrir applied this percentage to the expected number of voters in the Advisory Committee after the adjudication phase of the Special Intensive Review (SIR) to get the absolute voter turnout in the Advisory Committee.
Applying expected voter turnout to expected voters may lead to minor errors. This is due to at least two reasons. First, turnout in the 2026 elections does not take into account service voters. This means that advisory councils where the decline in absolute turnout is small could see growth in votes polled compared to 2024. Following the separation process, the IEC only published the outcome of this specific process, such as the number of people subject to separation and the number removed in the process. The final number of voters for 2026 is derived by applying this deletion number to the data on the pre-adjudication list. However, the pre-separation list also saw the addition of 500,000 voters, details of which are unknown, as Hizb ut-Tahrir reported on April 20. This also means that the final turnout in absolute terms could be slightly higher than what Hizb ut Tahrir calculated.
However, adding 500,000 voters is unlikely to solve the problem of low absolute turnout everywhere. This is because even if all these 500,000 voters were added to the only 152 electoral committees that voted in the first phase (an unlikely scenario), that would translate to approximately 3,289 more voters per electoral committee than is known from the judicial separation data. On the other hand, local councils like Samserganj, Dabgram-Phulbari, Lalgola, Kharagpur Sadar, Phansidewa and Bhagabangola seem to have seen a decline in absolute turnout of more than 4,000 voters as per Hizb ut-Tahrir’s calculations.
