Bengal SIR: Mamata seat Bhabanipur loses 47,000 voters; here’s why it is significant

The publication of the post-Special Intensive Revision (SIR) electoral rolls in West Bengal on Saturday (February 28) led to fresh political ripples in Bhabanipur, a high-profile Assembly constituency in southern Kolkata represented by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. More than 47,000 names were struck off, while 14,000 were kept “under adjudication”.

Overall, the number of voters in the poll-bound state, as recorded in the post-SIR electoral rolls, was more than 7.04 crore following the deletions and additions made during the revision process, West Bengal's Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Manoj Kumar Agarwal said on Saturday.

Bhabanipur, considered the Trinamool Congress (TMC) chief’s bastion where she has won three consecutive times since 2011 (she won the by-election there in 2021), had 2,06,295 voters when the SIR process began on November 4 last year.

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The draft roll, published on December 16 last year, showed the elimination of 44,786 names. When the final list was released on Saturday, it was seen that another 2,324 names were omitted, taking the total deductions to 47,094.

Mamata won 2021 bypoll by 58,000 votes

In 2021, Mamata won the bypoll in Bhabanipur against the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) Priyanka Tibrewal by 58,000 votes, after she lost in Nandigram in the state’s Purba Medinipur district against her former TMC colleague and the current Leader of Opposition, Suvendu Adhikari.

Apart from the deletions, 14,154 voters have been placed in the “under adjudication” category, with their fate subject to document verification.

In 2016, Mamata won in Bhabanipur against the Congress’s Deepa Dasmunsi by around 25,300 votes. In 2011, the margin of her victory against a Communist Party of India (Marxist) opponent was over 54,000.

If those voters who have been placed under “adjudication” category are also removed eventually, the net reduction in the constituency’s electorate could rise significantly, a development that has set off intense political speculation in the run-up to the 2026 polls.

However, the number of fresh additions in the constituency is yet to be officially ascertained.

Kolkata constituencies

The capital city has 11 Assembly seats in all. In the entire south Kolkata zone, which has four Assembly constituencies, the draft rolls comprised 6,91,306 names across 1,093 booths. The new list has 6,88,099 names, and 78,657 names are under review, said a report by Anandabazar Patrika.

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In the north Kolkata zone, comprising seven Assembly constituencies all currently held by the ruling TMC, around 4.07 lakh names were omitted from the rolls during the SIR process, EC sources said.

Of these, about 3.90 lakh were removed in the draft stage and another 17,000 in the final list. However, the number of fresh additions in north Kolkata is yet to be officially ascertained.

Districts scenario

In the district of Bankura in western Bengal, where the electorate was 30,33,830 at the start of the SIR process, the draft rolls had reduced the figure to 29,01,009.

After hearings and scrutiny in the subsequent phase, around 4,000 more names were deleted, though a few thousand fresh inclusions under Form 6 were approved. The final roll now stands at around 29,15,000, reflecting a net deletion of about 1.18 lakh names since the commencement of the exercise, a senior district official said.

The Nadia district bordering Bangladesh saw the deletion of around 2.73 lakh names as the number of voters in the final roll stood at 41.45 lakh, down from 44.18 lakh when the SIR process commenced last November. The figure had come down to 42,02,261 after the draft rolls were published in December.

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In Alipurduar district in north Bengal, 11,96,651 names featured in the final rolls, with the total deletions in the district standing at 1,02,835, officials said.

In Hooghly district, adjacent to Kolkata, there were 47,75,000 people before the SIR process kicked off, the ABP report added. After the draft roll was published, it was seen that 3,18,000 names were removed. Another 15,932 names were struck off when the final list came out on Saturday. Currently, the list from Hooghly has 44,40,293 voters out of which 1,73,064 names are “under adjudication”. The district is currently a fiercely fought one between the TMC and the BJP.

Total voters at over 7.04 crore

While confirming to the media that the state's total voter count in post-SIR electoral rolls stood at over 7.04 crore, Agarwal said the electoral roll revision process saw the deletion of more than 5.46 lakh electors through Form-7 and inclusion of more than 1.82 lakh voters via Form-6 and Form-6A submissions.

“Over 58 lakh enumeration forms were not received during the revision process, including cases of deceased, shifted and duplicate electors,” the CEO said.

He added that more than 60 lakh electors remain in the "under adjudication" category but have been included in the post-SIR electoral rolls.

The revision exercise was carried out in accordance with the directions of the Election Commission, Agarwal added.

(With agency inputs)