West Bengal assembly elections: SIR leaves both voters and vote-seekers in uncertainty

Names of lakhs of voters are “under adjudication” tag, which means that their right to vote would be assessed by judicial officers.

Kolkata: Sahina Mumtaz Begum has been a member of the West Bengal legislative assembly since 2021, and her party – the Trinamool Congress – has once again reposed faith in her and declared her its candidate in her home constituency Naoda in Murshidabad. But, even as Mamata Banerjee’s heir apparent and the ruling party’s ‘Numero Due’, Abhishek Banerjee, is likely to hold a rally in her support soon, she remains worried – not over her prospects, but because she is still not sure whether she will be able to contest the elections.

The list published by the Election Commission after the Special Intensive Revision of the electoral roll of West Bengal on February 28 had Sahina Mumtaz as a voter, but with an “under adjudication” tag, which meant that her right to vote would be assessed by judicial officers.

Even the first supplementary list, which was published on March 23 after almost half of more than 60 lakh “under adjudication” cases were adjudicated, her ‘status’ remained unchanged. “The polling is a few weeks away. But my voting right itself is still under question. I don’t know what will happen,” said Sahina, the daughter-in-law of Naseeruddin Shah, who had been elected to the state assembly four times, beginning in 1969.

Not only Sahina’s but uncertainties loom large on the candidature of Golam Rabbani and Fayezul Haque, the TMC’s bets in Goalpokhar and Hansan assembly constituencies, respectively, too, with the right to vote of both under scrutiny. “More than my candidature, I am worried about my people. So many of them were either struck off from the list or remained under adjudication,” Rabbani, a minister in the outgoing government, said.

“I am waiting for the second supplementary list. Let’s see what happens,” Fayezul, a.k.a. Kajal Sheikh, the chairman of Birbhum Zilla Parishad (district council), said. Rabbani, who was a government employee before joining politics, had submitted his passport, Aadhaar Card and school certificate as well as his voter card, to the officials deployed by the EC when he had been called for the hearing during the Special Intensive Revision of the electoral rolls. So had done Fayezul.

If uncertainties over their voting rights continue beyond April 6, the last day of filing nominations for the constituencies going to polls in the first phase on April 23, Sahina, Rabbani, and Haque will, of course, not be able to take part in the battle of ballots.

Kalita Maji was also in the “under adjudication” list in the electoral roll published on February 28. She had been summoned to the hearing during the revision of the electoral rolls, as she had seven siblings – a “logical discrepancy” according to the parameters the EC had set to detect cases which had required further scrutiny. The BJP, however, declared her the party’s candidate for Aushgram in Purba Bardhaman and the first supplementary list issued by the EC on March 23 restored her legitimate voter status.

Shahidullah Munshi, a retired judge of the Calcutta High Court and the chairman of the West Bengal Auqaf Board, his wife and elder son were also tagged as “under adjudication” voters in the February 28 electoral roll. The family submitted all required documents. But the March 23 supplementary list showed his wife and son still “under adjudication”, while he, himself, was struck off. He said that he would soon move the appellate tribunal seeking restoration of his right to vote.

Around 63.66 lakh names, around 8.3% of the electorate, had been deleted since the SIR process began in November 2025 till February 28, bringing down the size of the electorate from about 7.66 crore to just over 7.04 crore. However, over 60.06 lakh of the 7.04 crore voters had been placed in the “under adjudication” category, with their eligibility to remain on the electoral rolls being subjected to scrutiny by judicial officers.

After nearly half of the “under adjudication” cases had been adjudicated, the EC, on March 23, published the first supplementary list but did not officially disclose how many had by then regained legitimate voter status and how many had been deleted.

The EC sources in Kolkata, however, said that over 37 lakh of the “under adjudication” cases had been adjudicated so far, with nearly 40% being deleted. The number of deletions is thus estimated to have crossed the 78-lakh mark since the beginning of the process. The EC published the second supplementary list on Friday, and more such lists are expected to be released in the coming days.

Though the Supreme Court ordered the establishment of the appellate tribunals for the disenfranchised voters to challenge removal from the rolls, the process could not be started yet. Chief Electoral Officer Manoj Agarwal and the EC’s special roll observer, Subrata Gupta, had a meeting with Chief Justice of the Calcutta High Court, Sujay Paul, on Friday to discuss the preparation of infrastructure for the 19 appellate tribunals to be set up for the purpose.

The ‘adjudication’ process put under question the voting rights of Tojammel Haque, a soldier of the Indian Army, and his neighbour, Mohammed Nurul Huda, an employee of Kolkata Police since 1997, both residents of Badkhala in Birbhum. In Sujapur, Malda, 522 voters of a polling booth had been placed in the “under adjudication” category, but 427 of them could not find their names in the first supplementary list of voters were released by the EC. All the 340 voters of a booth in Basirhat North, placed in the “under adjudication” category, found themselves stripped of the voting right after the first supplementary list was published.