Kolkata:
A record deletion of voters turned out to be one of the major aspects of this year’s assembly elections in West Bengal – one that saw the BJP thundering into the Trinamool fortress, ending a 15-year regime helmed by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.
Just before the elections, over 90 lakh electors in the state found their names deleted from the voters’ lists months after the Election Commission took up a Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the voter rolls, aimed at cleaning its records of dead and duplicate voters.
Trinamool alleged the SIR process was targeted and alleged bias, fearing that it could lose out on its voter base. With the party now losing power, it warrants a look into how the deletions tallied with the vote counts for the Trinamool and the BJP.
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SIR Deletions vs Vote Counts
Over 25,000 names had been deleted in 147 constituencies of Bengal. A review by NDTV shows that a massive chunk of these went to the BJP. The party won 95 out of these 147 seats, while the Trinamool bagged nearly half, 51. Congress won just one.
In 67 seats where the deletions were between 15,000 and 25,000, the BJP again emerged as a winner. Out of these, the BJP won 47 seats, while the Trinamool won 19 seats and Congress one.
Out of 62 seats where the deletions were between 5,000-15,000, the BJP won 50, and the rest were clinched by the Trinamool. All 13 seats where the deletions were below 5,000 were won by the BJP.
During the adjudication process, the maximum number of cases deemed “excludable” were from the Murshidabad district. Here, over 4.55 lakh cases were deleted, followed by North 24 Parganas (3,25,666), and Malda (2,39,375).
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In Murshidabad, Trinamool had won 20 out of 22 seats in 2021; it dropped to just nine this time, indicating a split in the minority votes and a consolidation of Hindu votes in favour of the BJP.
A similar trend followed in North 24 Paraganas. Out of the 33 seats in this district, the Trinamool had won 28 seats in 2021, dropping to just eight this time. In Malda’s 12 seats, the party’s share went down from eight seats in 2021 to six this time. The remaining were won by the BJP.
The SIR Process
Conducted by the Election Commission, the SIR exercise was a contentious issue in West Bengal, a state that shares more than 2,200-km border with Bangladesh.
The exercise found a record 91 lakh voters deemed ineligible to vote in the country’s elections.
The total number of voters stood at over 7.66 crore here before the notification for the SIR process was issued last November. A draft voters’ list published in December showed that over 58.20 lakh names were deleted. The deletions increased to 63.66 lakh after the final list was published on February 28.
As per the figures provided by the Chief Electoral Officer’s office, over 60.06 lakh cases were referred for “judicial adjudication” in February. Of these, 27,16,393 voters were deemed “excludable”, taking the total number of deleted voters to 90,83,345.
