The SIR conundrum in West Bengal

The Special Intensive Revision (SIR) in West Bengal has finally ended barring a judicial adjudication of about 60 lakh electors as per the directions of the Supreme Court on February 20, 2026.

The electorate of West Bengal stood at 7.04 crore on February 28, 2026, reduced by 8.09% since the start of the revision process on October 27, 2025, when the number of voters in the State was 7.66 crore. Names of some more electors will be struck off the electoral rolls after the 501 judicial officers complete the process of adjudication, but for the people of West Bengal the process seems to be finally over.

For almost four months, the administration of West Bengal was on tenterhooks, trying to revise and update the electoral rolls. It took more than five lakh government officials including 80,681 BLOs (booth level officers) for each polling booth in the State to complete the process.

According to the Election Commission of India (ECI), the main objective of the SIR is to ensure inclusion of eligible electors and exclusion of those ineligible.

An updated and revised electoral roll forms the basis of elections in a democracy. The process was long due in West Bengal. So, the intent of poll body in updating and revising the voter list cannot be criticised, but the commission floundered in the manner the exercise was carried out over four months.

There was a rush to complete the process before the announcement for Assembly polls in West Bengal. This put not only officials involved in the process under huge stress but made the electorate of the State suffer. Millions of people, including the ailing elderly, were made to queue up at poorly organised SIR camps. There was little clarity on the grounds on which notices were being issued to voters to appear at the camps and what documents were required to prove someone as a legitimate voter.

The Supreme Court intervened on various occasions trying to streamline the process and even pointed at a ‘trust deficit’ between the State government and the poll panel before bringing in judicial officers to complete the last leg of the process.

The Trinamool Congress leadership not only opposed the SIR but tried to vitiate the process. It was a political move to rally the people against SIR and thereby blame the poll body and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government at the Centre for imposing an arduous and poorly executed exercise on the people.

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee made most of the SIR, wrote half-a-dozen letters to Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar and criticised the Commission and its officials in strongest words. Ms. Banerjee held several protest marches in the State, led a delegation of those who suffered due to the SIR to the EC headquarters, appeared in person before the Supreme Court, making quite a show before the State’s electorate.

The Trinamool Congress chairperson was able to score political points months ahead of the Assembly polls riding on the opposition of the SIR, even though some of her claims that over a hundred people had died due to SIR fears may not be entirely true.

The West Bengal BJP leadership, which has been demanding SIR on grounds of infiltration from the border with Bangladesh resulting in demographic change, seems a little disappointed with the outcome of the exercise. Contrary to the claims of BJP leaders that over a crore of names will be deleted, the SIR exercise has seen deletion of about 62 lakh names so far.

The SIR has busted many myths relating to the electorate and politics of West Bengal. The highest category of deletions was in the category of deceased voters, which accounted to 24 lakh names being struck off. The category of shifted voter accounted to 18 lakh removals and the deletions of absent voters who did not collect SIR enumeration forms was about 12 lakh. The majority of the names deleted under absent and shifted were migrant workers in West Bengal from other States. Such deletions were high in constituencies in an around Kolkata, which has a high population of migrants.

Matuas, a sect of Hindu refugees from Bangladesh, who have been migrating to the State for past several decades have faced the heat of SIR, since they lacked legacy data – names of forefathers in the 2002 voter list. The minority-dominated districts of Malda and Murshidabad account for almost 20% of the cases which are under judicial adjudication.

These indicators point out that neither the claim of the BJP that the voter list of the State is full of people infiltrating from across the border nor the fearmongering by Trinamool that lakhs of genuine voters will see their names deleted from electoral rolls is true.

Now that the SIR exercise is almost over, the poll body is likely to announce the dates of Assembly polls in the State in the next few days. With a sanitised and updated voter list, the Assembly election will have a better reflection of the mandate of the people.