Year-ender 2025: At the heart of Bengal’s churn lay the SIR

For the politically volatile state of West Bengal, 2025 unfolded as a year for in which the mechanics of voting, border anxieties and sharpening communal lines eclipsed governance, turning the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls and cross-border unrest into the state’s defining political battlegrounds.

If the Lok Sabha elections verdict of 2024 fixed the poll arithmetic, the politics of 2025 fixed the mood.

A steady undercurrent through the year was the spillover from neighbouring Bangladesh. Political instability and reports of communal violence across the border, including attacks on minorities and the killing of a Hindu man, fed directly into Bengal’s political discourse.

At home, the detention and pushback of Bengali-speaking migrant labourers from BJP-ruled states like Odisha, Assam, Delhi, Maharashtra and Gujarat on suspicion of being Bangladeshis ignited a political firestorm in West Bengal.

With the 2026 polls approaching, the Mamata Banerjee-led TMC went on the offensive, sharpening its Bengali identity pitch and accusing the BJP of institutional and linguistic profiling under the guise of national security, a strategy that blunted the saffron party’s Hindutva surge in the 2021 elections.

At the heart of Bengal’s churn lay the Election Commission’s SIR, the first such exercise since 2002. Draft rolls published under the revision saw over 58 lakh names dropped for reasons ranging from death and migration to duplication and untraceability.

Large sections of the electorate, particularly in border districts and refugee-settled pockets of Nadia, North and South 24 Parganas, Malda and parts of north Bengal, found themselves unsettled by notices, hearings and documentation requirements.

The TMC framed the exercise as a threat to genuine voters, accusing the Centre of engineering disenfranchisement months ahead of the polls.

The BJP countered by backing the revision as a constitutional necessity, accusing the ruling party of shielding illegal infiltrators.

As the hearing part of the SIR progressed, the voter list, rather than governance, became the organising axis of the election narrative.

In June, Sunali Khatun, a pregnant migrant resident of Birbhum, was detained by Delhi Police on suspicion of being a Bangladeshi and pushed across the border.

Following Supreme Court intervention, she was repatriated along with her minor son in December, an episode the TMC projected as emblematic of profiling and institutional excess.

Along the international border, reports of undocumented Bangladeshi nationals being pushed back through West Bengal sectors also fed competing political claims.

The shadow of Bangladesh grew larger as the year progressed. BJP leaders repeatedly invoked developments across the border to flag minority rights and regional security concerns.

Murshidabad remained politically sensitive throughout the year, particularly after the laying of a foundation stone for a mosque said to be modelled on Ayodhya’s Babri Masjid, sharpening symbolism and rhetoric amid a charged atmosphere.

Institutional shocks compounded the unease. The Supreme Court verdict upholding the cancellation of nearly 26,000 school jobs linked to irregular appointments through the School Service Commission delivered a social and political jolt.

Protests by terminated candidates became a recurring feature in Kolkata, strengthening the opposition’s corruption narrative, while the state government blamed procedural failures.

(with inputs from agencies)