West Bengal Assembly Elections 2026 | The last appeal and a sense of statelessness

Cooch Behar (Malda): Kalipad Rai exists. Both in flesh and blood and on government documents. Standing opposite the collector’s office in Cooch Behar, he gingerly pulls out his Aadhaar card and old voter ID from a cellophane bag and lays them bare as proof of his existence.

“What’s my fault? I had gone to Rajasthan for work. My name has been deleted from the voters’ list,” he tells Nazrul Haq, whose name too has been struck off during West Bengal’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls.

Cooch Behar and other parts of north Bengal go to the polls in the first phase on April 23. In the first week of April, the Election Commission informed the Supreme Court that the electoral rolls had been frozen.

Yet, many among the 27 lakh “doubtful” names that did not clear adjudication continue to hold on, hoping against hope to make it back to the list.

Aggrieved persons facilitation centres have been set up at district headquarters for filing appeals, which will be adjudicated by tribunals in Kolkata, as directed by the apex court.

The Supreme Court, in an updated order on Thursday, invoked special powers to rule that individuals whose appeals are allowed by the Appellate Tribunal will be eligible to vote and supplementary revised rolls will be issued by the Election Commission (EC).

“Dada, can you help me with my form?” Fatima Bibi (name changed) asks this reporter at the Malda collectorate. She has come to file an appeal on behalf of her husband, who is away for work. He was born and brought up in Mothabadi, she says, some 15 km from the district headquarters at English Bazaar, where, earlier this month, judicial officers verifying adjudicated voters were held hostage at a block office.

In Bengal, as terms like SIR and “ghuspethia” (illegal migrant) acquire political overtones, for those who have lost their voting rights, it feels like a form of statelessness, especially in districts bordering Bangladesh. In anxiety and despair, they stand in queues, making one last appeal to have their voting rights restored, at least for future elections.

“Due to non-cooperation between the state government and the EC, many people were put under adjudication. AI cannot accurately translate Bengali surnames when converting the 2002 voter list,” says Isha Ali Khan, Congress MP from Malda South.

“Rohingyas and Bangladeshi illegal migrants enter this region and create law and order problems,” alleges Dalit Roy, BJP candidate from Mynaguri in Jalpaiguri district.

Data shows the SIR has also skewed the gender ratio among electors in Bengal. At appeal centres, a large proportion of applicants are women who have moved out of their parental homes after marriage.

“My sister’s name was deleted as she now lives with her husband, some 20 kilometres from here,” says Pushkar Das. At the Malda collectorate, an elderly woman is accompanied by her two daughters, one married and the other working outside Bengal, to file an appeal. The names of all three have been deleted from the final voter list.

In Cooch Behar district, the three subdivisions—Dinhata, Mathabhanga and Mekliganj—are the most affected by the SIR.

SIR became a huge issue, particularly among those who were promised Indian citizenship after India and Bangladesh exchanged 162 enclaves under the Land Boundary Agreement in 2015.

Residents say their names should be included based on the 2015 electoral rolls, not the 2002 documents.

Madhya Masaldanga in Dinhata is one of the 52 enclaves that merged with India. Locals claim that of 397 voters, 88 names have been deleted.

“I was lucky. My name was in the adjudication list, but I got my passport in 2025, which helped me retain my name on the voters’ list,” says Joy Abadeen.

But his neighbours, Alamin and Noon Nabi Sheikh, he adds, were not as lucky.

Not just Muslims, Namoshudras—a Dalit social group that has migrated from Bangladesh over the years and constitutes nearly 20% of the population in Cooch Behar—have also reported deletions.

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