People check their names in the voters’ list after publication of the post-Special Intensive Revision (SIR) electoral rolls, in Birbhum, West Bengal
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As West Bengal’s final electoral roll after the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) saw a net deletion of over 61.78 lakh voters and over 60.06 lakh names under adjudication, the ruling Trinamool Congress in the State on Sunday termed the four-month-long process conducted by the Election Commission as a “silent invisible rigging”.
The Mamata Baneree-led party alleged the “arbitrary deletions” of voters under SIR is a systematic humiliation engineered to disenfranchise and to silence Bengal’s voice.
West Bengal Pradesh Congress also alleged that the tagging of over 60 lakh names as “under consideration” under the SIR process reflects a grave political conspiracy.
The Election Commission of India published Bengal’s final electoral roll on Saturday after the Special Intensive Revision, which has emerged as a major political issue ahead of the upcoming Assembly polls.
In the final electoral roll, net deletion of voters stood at over 61.78 lakh after removal of a total of around 63.67 lakh names and addition of around 1.88 lakh names. Additionally, the list notes that the names of 60.06 lakh voters are under adjudication as on date.
According to the Election Commission, the State has six crore forty-four lakh fifty-two thousand six hundred and nine (6,44,52,609) total electorate as on February 28, 2026, down from seven crore, sixty-six lakh, thirty-seven thousand, five hundred twenty-nine voters (7,66,37,529) as on October 27, 2025, before the SIR exercise.
The poll body said 60.06 lakh “doubtful and pending cases” have been marked under adjudication in the electoral roll. Names approved by judicial officers will be added by way of supplementary list later.
Stepping up his attack on the Election Commission over the post-SIR electoral roll, Trinamool Congress MP and national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee on Sunday alleged that the “target of deleting over one crore voters was decided even before the exercise began”.
Banerjee said BJP leaders had publicly stated that around “1.2 crore names” would be removed from the electoral roll for West Bengal. “If you add the deletions and those put under adjudication, the number corresponds closely to the figure of 1.2 crore,” the Trinamool Congress leader said during a media conference in Kolkata.
Sit-in protest
He said Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee will stage a sit-in protest in the city on March 6 on the issue. She will further declare the next course of action.
The BJP was unable to win elections politically in Bengal and was therefore trying to “influence the poll result by deleting genuine voters by using the Election Commission”, Banerjee added.
The Trinamool Congress claimed that the name of World Cup-winning Indian women’s cricket team member Richa Ghosh has been placed in the “under adjudication” category in the final electoral roll released by the poll body.
“A World Cup-winning star like Richa Ghosh, Bengal’s pride, India’s hero, the wicketkeeper-batter who donned the blue jersey and brought glory to the nation, has now been placed “under adjudication” in the final electoral rolls,” the party said in a post on X.
“When even celebrities and national icons can be arbitrarily targeted, questioned, and subjected to this degrading process, what hope for the common Bengali voter? This is systematic humiliation engineered to disenfranchise, to silence, to erase Bengal’s voice one name at a time,” it added.
In a statement, West Bengal Pradesh Congress president Subhankar Sarkar alleged that by marking a large number of voters as “under consideration,” the Election Commission is attempting to alter the demographic character of West Bengal.
Sarkar cited figures indicating that while slightly over 1.8 lakh voters have been included through Form 6, more than 5 lakh voters have been deleted — a trend contrary to other States where the SIR process has been conducted.
Published on March 1, 2026
