The electoral rolls will be published after the SIR on February 28 in West Bengal, with all the 7.08 lakh crore names emerging from the draft list, but they will be separated into three distinct categories – approved, deleted and adjudicated/under consideration, an EC official said on Thursday.
The official said that the lists, which are being published in compliance with the Supreme Court’s directives, will not be the final list, as supplementary lists will continue to be released in phases as scrutiny progresses and cases of logical inconsistency are adjudicated.
The lists will reflect the verification status under the ongoing Special Intensive Review (SIR), sources said.
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Crucially, the Commission has made it clear that voters whose names are marked “ruled” will not be allowed to cast their ballots until their cases have been decided and formally approved. The European Commission official said that they will not receive voting rights until they are approved and included in a subsequent supplementary list.
The names of voters marked as “deleted” will remain visible in the February 28 list, and specific reasons for deletion will not be mentioned in the published list, the official said.
However, affected voters will have corrective opportunities to have their names reinstated in the electoral rolls at a later date, following the rulings of the poll body, he added.
According to Commission sources, voters whose names are verified by February 25, the day on which the EC-led vetting process closes, will be treated as eligible voters and may appear on the February 28 list with an “Approved” mark next to them.
The names of voters, whose cases have been referred to judicial officials appointed by the Calcutta High Court to scrutinize “logical inconsistencies”, will be marked as “under adjudication” or “under consideration”.
About 60,000 voters are currently undergoing this vetting, officials said, adding that those who have been adjudicated but not approved will also remain ineligible to vote.
At the time of the SIR notification, West Bengal had 7.66 crore registered voters. After the first phase of review, over 58 lakh names were deleted on the grounds of death, migration, duplication or untraceability, bringing the number of voters down to 7.08 lakh crore in the draft lists published on December 16.
The second phase of hearings covered 1.67 crore voters, including 1.36 lakh crore voters who were flagged for “logical inconsistencies” and 31 lakh crore voters missing mapping, officials said.
All these 7.08 lakh crore names – including those marked as deleted, pending adjudication or approved as approved – will appear in the February 28 list under separate categories, allowing voters to check the status of their entries.
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New applicants will be added through separate supplemental lists attached to the main list. The Commission indicated that supplementary lists will be published at several stages during which the elections are held.
Officials said that printing of the lists will begin on Friday. The lists will be made available at the offices of district magistrates and sub-divisional officers and at polling booths across the state, besides uploading them on the commission’s website.
This practice has sparked a political storm in the state ahead of the 2026 House of Representatives elections.
Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday vowed to continue her fight against what she called “omission” of actual voters’ names, alleging a “conspiracy” to delete more than 1.2 crore names from the final lists, citing discrepancies.
Referring to the deletion of 58 lakh names after the first phase of SIR, Banerjee claimed that citing logical contradictions, at least 20 lakh additional genuine voters were “surreptitiously removed” after the February 14 hearing deadline.
The Trinamool Congress has claimed that the scale and manner of deletion could lead to disenfranchisement, while the committee stressed that the review is aimed at ensuring accuracy and removing ineligible entries.
With the February 28 circular set to provide a snapshot of the verification status of over seven crore voters, and with those under ‘judicial adjudication’ barred from voting till liquidation, political parties are expected to closely scrutinize the ranked lists even as the process of adjudication and finalization continues in a phased manner.
