Final list not ‘final’ in Bengal as ECI keeps 60 lakh voters ‘under adjudication’

First the Election Commission (EC) found ‘logical discrepancies’ and flagged 1.32 crore voters in West Bengal. Then they demanded that all potential voters must be ‘mapped’ and furnish evidence that they or their immediate family members were voters in 2002. Then the ECI, complaining of non-cooperation by state government employees, insisted on central observers to conduct the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls. This was followed by ‘micro observers’ and extension of dates. The Calcutta High Court was then directed to depute judicial officers to vet the process. Still dissatisfied over the progress, the Supreme Court directed the Calcutta HC to requisition judicial officers from adjoining states of Jharkhand, Odisha and Bihar.

It was a messy exercise, compounded by glitches in the BLO app and a series of instructions issued sometimes daily on WhatsApp. Now that the ‘final’ electoral roll has been released, the ECI has admitted to have deleted 63.5 lakh voters who were on the rolls during the Lok Sabha election in 2024. In addition, 60 lakh voters have been kept in suspended animation ‘under adjudication’. Whether their names will be restored in the roll will depend on the judicial officers who will oversee the details. No deadline has been fixed for the adjudication to be completed. With the notification for the assembly election due by the middle of March, doubts have been expressed whether the exercise can be completed.

Describing SIR as ‘rigging’, the Trinamool Congress declared that chief minister Mamata Banerjee would sit on a protest ‘dharna’ on Friday, 6 March 2026. The CEO’s bulletin issued on 19 January, the last date for filing objections through Form 7, had put the number of objections received as 41 thousand. How did the number go up to five lakhs in March, asked party MP and general secretary Abhishek Banerjee, who also happens to be the chief minister’s nephew.

Similarly, in January 2026 the CEO’s bulletin had flagged that 6.33 lakh forms had been received from ‘new voters’, Banerjee claimed. How did this number come down to 1.82 lakh in March, he wondered. Daring the government and the BJP to impose President’s Rule in the state, he predicted that no matter what the BJP does in the state, its tally in the next election will not exceed 50 in a House of 294.  The names deleted and the names kept under adjudication, he pointed out, came close to the number of deletions that BJP leaders had all along predicted from the beginning of SIR.

Ironically, Muslim voters who were confident that they had the documents and they were all ‘mapped’, appear to have borne the brunt of the ECI’s distrust. They had the documents and their names had figured in the draft list. In the final list though, many Muslims find themselves to be ‘under adjudication’ with no clue as to the reason.  Simply put, despite having the required documents, despite having been physically verified by BLOs and despite establishing that they or their immediate family members were indeed voters in the state in 2002, they have been left in the limbo. A X user Alamgir Rizvi vented on the platform, “Born, stayed, studied in Kolkata. My father & grandfather died here. Name on 2002 list. Yet find my name ‘under adjudication’. Seeing widespread deletion of names in WB, esp. Muslims.”

The CEO, West Bengal, Manoj Agarwal, admitted on Saturday that the task was so huge that mistakes were indeed possible. Indeed, the ECI’s software misspelt the name of Supreme Court justice Joymalya Bagchi, one of the judges hearing the challenge to the SIR and named him as ‘Jogmalya Bagchi’. The Justice is unlikely to be able to vote if his EPIC carries the misspelt name.

Asked how many foreign nationals, Bangladeshis or Rohingya Muslims SIR had detected, he fumed that it was not his job. This, he pointed out, was the job of the union home ministry. He also blamed the BLOs and EROs for the mistakes. In short, the CEO admitted mistakes in the electoral roll but refused to take any responsibility for them.

The CEO made matters worse by issuing a clarification on Sunday, 1 March 2026 when he responded to public outraged after it became known that international cricketer Richa Ghosh, who was touring Australia with the Indian women’s team, and her sister have been placed ‘under adjudication’. Both her parents, however, figure in the final list. The CEO explained that Ghosh’s name was found ‘unmapped’ though documents were submitted by her relatives. For some unexplained reason, the BLO/ERO/AERO had failed to process the case.  

Other notable features in the final electoral roll are the following, flagged an NGO SABAR Institute:

• Murshidabad, Malda and Uttar Dinajpur, districts that earlier had some of the lowest unmapped rates, now show the highest number of cases under adjudication. (Unmapped refers to voters who could not be mapped to the 2002 voter list.) Notably, all three are predominantly Muslim districts.

• In contrast, North & South 24 Parganas and Nadia, which earlier had very high unmapped voters, have seen their ‘under-adjudication’ number decline significantly

• In Muslim-majority constituencies, most voters are mapped ie. they can be traced back to the 2002 voter list, either by their own name or a family member's. Yet a much larger number of Muslim voters in these constituencies are placed “under adjudication”

• In seats where BJP won the last time, the number of ‘adjudications’ pending are significantly lower. In seats where Trinamool won the ECI has flagged more voters.