The Election Commission of India (ECI) has released the data from the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral roll last conducted in West Bengal in 2022, amid concerns about a fresh such exercise in neighbouring poll-bound Bihar and chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s opposition to it. West Bengal is due to go to the polls in 2026.
The 2003 Bihar SIR data was published days before the ECI launched the fresh exercise to revise the electoral roll on June 28 as a reference point for the submission of identification documents. Nearly 60% of the total electorate were not required to submit any documents. They had to verify their details and submit enumeration forms.
The Bengal data was published on Monday under the head of “Electoral Roll of SIR, 2002” on the website of the state’s chief electoral officer. It covers 11 of the state’s 23 districts—Cooch Behar, Jalpaiguri, Darjeeling, Uttar Dinajpur, Dakshin Dinajpur, Malda, Nadia, Howrah, Hooghly, Midnapore, and Bankura, covering 103 of 294 assembly constituencies. The data on remaining assembly constituencies will be updated soon.
This comes against the backdrop of disenfranchisement concerns over the SIR in Bihar. Opposition parties have questioned the haste in revising the electoral roll there months before the polls. They argued it could have been undertaken earlier and that those without necessary documents, particularly backward communities, would find themselves deprived of their right to vote.
West Bengal’s ruling Trinamool Congress slammed the SIR in Bihar, alleging it was a ploy to surreptitiously introduce the National Register of Citizens (NRC). On July 21, Banerjee vowed she would not allow SIR in Bengal. She asked Booth Level Officers (BLOs) to ensure that names of voters are not struck off from the electoral roll and people are not harassed. “The ECI takes over only after the poll dates are announced. Until then, and even after that, the administration lies with the state government. You are employees of the state government. Do not harass any individual needlessly,” she said at an administrative meeting in Birbhum.
Opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Suvendu Adhikari alleged that there has been a sudden spike in applications to enrol voters in districts bordering Bangladesh. He added that this coincided with a directive from the state administration to district-level officers to issue domicile certificates. Adhikari said he has written to the ECI to ensure that no domicile certificates issued on or after July 25, 2025, are accepted or considered during the SIR if such activity is conducted in West Bengal.
TMC lawmaker Mahua Moitra is among those who have challenged Bihar SIR in the Supreme Court. Moitra’s petition said the ECI has decided to undertake a similar exercise in West Bengal and sought an order to restrain it. She claimed the exercise resembles the structure and consequences of the NCR, as the consequence of non-submission of documents will result in automatic exclusion from the electoral roll, without adequate procedural protection.
The petitioners cited a Special Summary Revision between October 2024 and January 2025 in Bihar and said the necessary weeding out of names based on death, migration, etc, was carried out. “The ECI’s decision to conduct a second revision in such a draconian manner in a poll-bound state is unjustified and unreasonable,” Moitra said.
The petitioners opposed the manner and timing of the ECI in undertaking the exercise, giving 30 days for voters to provide proof of their citizenship based on a set of 11 documents, which do not include readily available ones such as Aadhaar, ECI photo identity card, or ration card. They said the revision had the effect of “disenfranchising crores of voters, thereby robbing them of their constitutional right to vote,” disproportionately targeting Muslim, Dalit, and poor migrant communities
On June 24, the ECI announced the revision, emphasising the need to clean the electoral roll due to rapid urbanisation, frequent migration, increasing numbers of first-time voters, non-reporting of deaths, and the inclusion of names of undocumented foreigners.