Suresh Chandra Mahato, 31, braves a tormenting sun and walks hurriedly towards the market through his small patch of land after plucking sponge gourd before it starts to rot.
A portion of his harvest has already gone to waste as he spent the last few days shuttling between offices with identity documents in hand to get his name back on the voter roll.
Suresh and five members of his family have been excised from the very document that once affirmed their citizenship, stoking a gnawing fear of losing identity, entitlements and a voice in the system that governs their lives.
From the SDO’s office to local political leaders, Suresh has knocked on every door, only to return with uncertainty. “What next?” is no longer a question of procedure, but of existence.
In this river-bound village that looks deceptively close to Kalyani town yet remains cut off in more ways than one, the SIR has spiralled into a deeply human crisis. The roll revision has wiped out not just names, but a sense of belonging for hundreds.
The ripples of a four-decade-old geographical phenomenon still course through the hamlet, which was once part of Hooghly’s Chandrahati panchayat under the Balagarh Assembly constituency. In the late 1980s, the Hooghly river changed its course, obliterated settlements, created a landmass in Nadia on the opposite bank and forced residents to relocate there.
What followed was a prolonged limbo, a 28-year tug-of-war between the two districts, during which the villagers were effectively stripped of their voting rights.
It took a Calcutta High Court-directed intervention in 2009 for the state to finally recognise them as voters. That hard-earned inclusion, however, now stands undone by the rigid parameters of the SIR exercise. Without legacy documents tied to Nadia before 2002, many have failed to meet the verification criteria. Even land records dating back decades and earlier voter lists from Balagarh have proved insufficient.
eleted voter Suresh Mahato plucks sponge gourd from his field in Char Jatrasiddhi.
Seventy-year-old Sudama Mahato sits in his courtyard, surrounded by bundles of papers he can no longer fully comprehend. Dementia has begun to blur his memory, but not his anxiety. Every day, he sifts through documents, hoping to find a link reconnecting him to a voter list from which his name has been deleted.
A voter from Balagarh until 1985, Sudama’s life was upended by the capricious Hooghly, which redrew administrative boundaries and made him a resident of Nadia without his consent.
With no presence in the 2002 benchmark electoral rolls, Sudama cannot establish the “linkage” required under the current revision norms. Six members of his family have been struck off the rolls. His daughter-in-law, the only one to be retained on the list, tries to reassure him, but his anxiety refuses to subside.
Such stories repeat with numbing regularity across Char Jatrasiddhi under the Kalyani Assembly seat.
Out of 1,013 voters under a single polling station, only 392 names have survived the revision, leaving out a staggering majority ahead of the Assembly elections. For a community that had already endured nearly three decades of disenfranchisement before regaining voting rights in 2009, the present moment feels like a return to a buried past.
The village itself stands as a metaphor for this paradox. Barely 3km from Kalyani, it is encircled by a canal of the Ganga. A crumbling bridge connects it to the mainland, mirroring the tenuous link its residents now share with the state.
Sorting sponge gourd, a dejected Suresh said: “My father Hiralal Mahato was a voter under the Balagarh Assembly constituency in Hooghly till 1985. But after that, he and other people who then lived here were brought under the administrative control of Nadia district. But the transfer of our administrative attachment robbed my father and other people of this area of their voting rights. They all regained their voting rights in 2009 when the Nadia administration included the villagers in the voter list of the Kalyani Assembly seat. So, for obvious reasons, the names of my father and many others were not on the 2002 list. As a result, my name also could not be linked with him.”
Hiralal, 71, who once worked as a labourer at a paper mill on the banks of the Hooghly, said: “We have been living here for more than 100 years after our forefathers migrated from Bihar. We got land here. So, during the enumeration, we submitted land documents and the voter list for the Balagarh Assembly seat of 1985, which the officials accepted as a special case. But, eventually, none from our family, except the wife of my younger son, was included in the voter list.”
Hiralal’s daughter-in-law, Sumita Mahato, who hails from East Burdwan, was mapped with her parents.
The numbers tell a stark story. Initially, 371 names were struck off for lack of linkage. In the preliminary list published on February 28, 251 were put in the “under adjudication” category. Of them, 250 were deleted from the supplementary list, pushing total exclusions to 621.
“We lost our voting rights once because of administrative confusion. We regained it after years of struggle. Now we are being punished again for the same reason,” said Shibsankar Mahato, a former voter in Balagarh.
Authorities acknowledge the complexity but cite procedural constraints. Special camps were organised, forms accepted under exceptional provisions, yet the final lists tell a different story. Officials maintain that many could not furnish the prescribed documents and have been advised to approach the tribunals before which deleted voters can appeal for reinstatement.
Political fault lines have formed around the crisis. Local Trinamool leaders have alleged a larger design behind the exclusions, accusing the Opposition of orchestrating a “conspiracy” to disenfranchise vulnerable populations.
“We have advised them to appeal before the tribunal. Necessary legal support will be given to them,” said local panchayat member and Trinamool leader Pankaj Singh.
Beyond the poll rhetoric, the lived reality in Char Jatrasiddhi remains stark and immediate. Basic civic concerns — roads, connectivity, infrastructure, transportation — have been eclipsed by a more fundamental fear.
“We have lived without facilities for years, but never without identity,” said Ashok Pandit, a priest whose extended family has largely been excluded. “Now everything else seems secondary.”
With appeals pending and no clarity in sight, some villagers are contemplating a boycott of the polls.
As dusk settles over the village, Suresh gathers what remains of his harvest. His struggle, like that of hundreds around him, is no longer confined to livelihood. It is a struggle to remain visible in the eyes of the State.
In Char Jatrasiddhi, the question is whether a community, already battered by geography and history, can survive yet another erasure.
- Kalyani votes on April 29