West Bengal Assembly Elections 2026 | TMC bastions take biggest hit as SIR purges 91 lakh voters in West Bengal

With about 27 lakhs of over 60 lakh voters placed in the “under adjudication” category struck off the lists, the Special Intensive Revision of the electoral rolls has so far shrunk the size of the electorate in poll-bound West Bengal by nearly 91 lakh voters, bringing it down from 7.66 crore to 6.77 crore.

The people excluded from the electoral rolls of the 152 assembly constituencies going to the polls on April 23 will not be able to vote in this election. No further changes will be made in the electoral rolls in those constituencies, as the deadline for filing nominations for the first phase of the polling expired on Monday. Some of the disenfranchised people in the remaining 142 constituencies, where polling will be held on April 29, however, may still get a chance to vote if the appellate tribunals set up for the purpose settle their cases before the expiry of the deadline to file nominations on Thursday.

The Election Commission published the last supplementary voter list late at night on Monday. The commission followed it up by releasing early on Tuesday the data about the deletion of voters following the disposal of the cases that went through the adjudication process.

Around 63.66 lakh names, around 8.3 per cent of the electorate, had been deleted till February 28. However, over 60.06 lakh more voters had been placed in the “under adjudication” category, and their eligibility to remain on the electoral rolls was subjected to scrutiny by judicial officers, monitored by the Calcutta High Court as per the order of the Supreme Court.

The EC data showed that over 27.16 lakh voters of the 60.06 lakhs placed in the “under adjudication” category had been struck off the rolls, while more than 32.68 lakh of them had been included in the electoral rolls.

The disenfranchised people – mostly still unaware of the procedure of lodging appeals – waited in the long queues in the district and sub-divisional headquarters for several hours, although the process could not be streamlined across the state till Tuesday.

The North 24 Parganas and South 24 Parganas districts of the state saw the highest overall voter deletions so far – 12.60 lakh from 83 lakh and 10.91 lakh from 85.94 lakh, respectively, since the SIR of the electoral rolls commenced in West Bengal in November 2025.

The ruling Trinamool Congress had won in 28 of the 33 constituencies in the North 24 Parganas district in the last assembly elections in 2021. The Bharatiya Janata Party had won in five. Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s party had won 30 of the 31 assembly seats from South 24 Parganas, while the saffron party had drawn a blank in the district.

Muslims account for about 66 per cent and 51 per cent population in the Murshidabad and the Malda districts, respectively, according to the 2011 census. The two districts witnessed maximum deletions of the voters, who had been placed in the “under adjudication” category.

Over 4.55 lakh of the “under adjudication” voters were struck off the rolls in Murshidabad, raising the overall deletion since the beginning of the revision to 7.48 lakh.

In Malda, the overall deletion went up to 4.59 lakh, with 2.39 lakh “under adjudication” voters being stripped off the voting rights. Murshidabad and Malda had 57.64 lakh and 31.99 lakh voters respectively before the beginning of the process.

The TMC had won 18 of the 20 seats from Murshidabad and eight of the 12 seats in Malda in 2021. The BJP had won two and four seats from Murshidabad and Malda, respectively. The TMC and the BJP had secured 53per cent and 32.08 per cent votes in Malda and 54 per cent and 24 per cent votes in Murshidabad in the last assembly elections.