SIR in Bengal: Deaths, war of words continue

Kolkata: Madan Ghosh, 65, died of a cerebral stroke while waiting in the queue to appear before the officials to defend his right to vote in Howrah, while Kanchan Mandal, 77, died after suffering a cardiac arrest while waiting for his turn for the same in Birbhum.

Hamimul Islam, one of the Booth Level Officers appointed by the Election Commission for the Special Intensive Revision of the electoral rolls, was on the other side of the table. But he, too, died by suicide in Murshidabad, allegedly due to the pressure of additional work the poll panel assigned to the 47-year-old headmaster of a primary school.

The deaths of Madan, Kanchan and Hamimul were the latest ones blamed on the EC’s SIR of the electoral rolls in West Bengal, not only by the members of the bereaved families, as well as the ruling Trinamool Congress, which continued its war of words with the commission as well as its principal challenger, Bharatiya Janata Party, over the exercise.

Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, who also leads the ruling TMC, alleged in her latest letter to Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar that the state had already seen 77 deaths, in addition to four suicide attempts and 17 persons falling sick and necessitating hospitalisation, since the SIR of the electoral rolls had started in October 2025. “This is attributed to fear, intimidation and disproportionate workload due to unplanned exercise undertaken by the ECI (Election Commission of India),” she wrote, urging Kumar to take “corrective actions” to “minimise the harassment, inconvenience and agony of the common citizen of the state”.

Kumar has not yet replied to Mamata’s letter, which, however, prompted Suvendu Adhikari, a frontrunner for the BJP’s chief ministerial face for the state assembly elections, to send a strong riposte. Adhikari, the Leader of Opposition in the state assembly, also wrote a letter to the CEC on Sunday, dismissing the complaints of the TMC supremo.

“One of the most egregious aspects of her letter is the attribution of 77 deaths, 4 suicide attempts, and 17 hospitalisations directly to the SIR,” Adhikari wrote to the CEC, adding: “These figures appear to be fabricated or opportunistically linked to unrelated incidents, much like during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the state health department under her leadership labelled every death as due to comorbidities to evade accountability for its mismanagement of healthcare and resources.”

“There is no verifiable evidence connecting these tragic events to the electoral revision; instead, it reflects a pattern of scapegoating central institutions to mask local governance lapses,” the BJP leader went on, arguing that the SIR was a verification process, not a punitive one, and any genuine hardships could be addressed through the appeals mechanism already in place.

Dipankar, the son of Madan Ghosh, who died of cerebral stroke while waiting in the queue for the SIR hearing, said that his father had been suffering from anxiety over the possibility of being struck out of the electoral rolls. Madan had suddenly fallen sick and had been rushed to a hospital, where he had been declared dead. “Despite his name being present in the voter list for years, he was summoned, subjected to an inhuman process, and pushed into prolonged anxiety,” Kalyan Ghosh, the local TMC legislator, alleged.

The family of Kanchan Mandal also alleged that he had been under mental stress after he had been asked to appear for the SIR hearing, fearing disenfranchisement.

Hamimul’s body was found hanging in a room at the school at Bhagabangola in Murshidabad, where he had been serving as a headmaster. “It was the additional burden of work that was imposed on my brother after being appointed as the BLO for the SIR that pushed him to take his own life,” Forman-ul Islam, the elder brother of the deceased, said.

His death came close on the heels of the recovery of the body of another school teacher, Haradhan Mandal, who had also been appointed as a BLO in Bankura by the EC for the revision of the electoral rolls. Mandal, according to the police, left a note, conveying that he had decided to end his life as he had not been able to cope with the pressure of additional work assigned to him in connection with the SIR.

The EC published the draft electoral rolls for West Bengal on December 16 after the first phase of the SIR, striking off over 58 lakh voters and cutting down the size of the electorate from 7.66 crore at the beginning of the year to 7.08 crore. In the second phase, which started on December 27, 1.67 crore voters under scrutiny are being summoned for hearings, including 1.36 crore flagged for logical discrepancies and 31 lakh whose current electoral roll details did not match or link to the records from the 2002 voter list. The number of voters with logical discrepancies, however, subsequently came down to 94.49 lakh.