- Gujarat voters before SIR: 5.08cr
- Deletions in SIR draft rolls: 73.7 lakh (14.5 per cent)
- Bengal voters before SIR: 7.66cr
- Deletions in SIR draft rolls: 58 lakh (7.5 per cent)
The enumeration phase of the SIR has witnessed far more deletions from the voter list in Gujarat, ruled by the BJP for 27 years straight, than in Bengal where India’s ruling party alleges an invasion by cross-border “infiltrators”.
The publication of Gujarat’s draft SIR rolls on Friday has led the state Opposition to accuse the BJP of winning Assembly polls with “bogus” votes, and allowed Trinamool leaders in Bengal to taunt the saffron party.
While the enumeration process has deleted absent, shifted, dead and duplicate voters in both states, the final rolls — to be published on February 14 — may witness more deletions, for instance, of those called to hearings but unable to prove their eligibility with documents.
The registered voter strength in Gujarat was 50,843,436 before the special intensive revision of the electoral rolls. In the draft rolls, the figure is 43,470,109, meaning 7,373,327 entries have been removed.
In Bengal, the figures are, respectively, 76,637,529 and 70,816,630, marking 5,820,899 deletions. In percentage terms, Gujarat’s deletions (14.5) are nearly double Bengal’s (7.5)
Trinamool spokesperson Arup Chakraborty hit out at the BJP, which has been claiming that Bengal is teeming with illegal immigrants patronised by its ruling party, and that the SIR would weed them out.
“Now these BJP leaders in Bengal will not say a word about Gujarat, where the number of deletions is higher than that in Bengal. That is why we call them anti-Bengal,” Chakraborty said.
At a rally last week, Bengal leader of the Opposition Suvendu Adhikari had claimed the BJP had already bridged the gap with Trinamool.
“We had only a gap of 42 lakh votes with the TMC (in last year’s general election), and that gap has already been settled as the names of 58 lakh voters have been deleted. We know that the TMC used to cast votes in the names of dead people,” the Nandigram MLA had said.
Days earlier, after Bengal’s draft rolls were published on December 16, however, Suvendu and Bengal BJP president Samik Bhattacharya had left themselves with more elbow room, saying these deletions were just the tip of the iceberg.
They had claimed that a large number of “fake voters”, including “infiltrators”, would be removed during the hearing process before the final rolls are published.
“I shall discuss the number of deletions only after the final rolls are published,” Suvendu had said.
Chakraborty dismissed these claims, too.
“In reality, those excluded from the draft rolls in Bengal are mostly Hindu refugees and those who had enrolled their names from other BJP-ruled states such as Bihar and Uttar Pradesh,” he said.
He alleged that “BJP leaders in Delhi have set (the poll panel) a target of deleting the names of 1.5 crore voters in Bengal, mainly those belonging to the minority community”.
Gujarat Congress president Amit Chavda told The Telegraph that the large-scale deletions from the draft rolls indicated that all these years, the BJP had been winning elections with “bogus”, dead and migrated voters.
He claimed the deletions were a result of the pressure exerted by Rahul Gandhi’s “vote chori” campaign.
Chavda, however, suggested that some genuine voters may have been excluded, too. He said Congress workers were examining their details so that their cases could be taken up.
Gujarat Aam Aadmi Party president Isudan Gadhvi told this newspaper the party had formed a force of 20,000 people who would verify the deletions and help genuine voters whose names were missing.
Gadhvi said the party would also check whether the name deletions had any political implication. He alleged that the Election Commission worked on the instructions of the BJP.
Mujahid Nafees, convener of the Minority Coordination Committee in Gujarat, said the hurried conduct of the SIR was cause for doubt. He said aspiring new voters had not been given forms.
There are allegations that block-level officers (BLOs) had asked people looking to register as new voters, including those who recently turned 18, to fill out Form 6 after three months. The commission, however, has said that special focus is being laid on the inclusion of young voters.
According to the poll panel, citizens who have recently turned 18, or will turn 18 on or before January 1, 2026, are being encouraged to apply for enrolment through Form 6 along with the necessary declaration.
Nafees alleged that the draft rolls contained errors. Giving an example, he said his wife’s name was not rectified even though the correct name was provided to the commission. “What is the point of the SIR, then?” he asked.
As in several other states, the SIR in Gujarat has drawn accusations of piling inhuman pressure on the BLOs, the foot soldiers of the exercise.
Four BLOs suffered heart attacks and died, their families blaming work pressure, and one committed suicide after writing to his wife that he could not take the pressure any longer.
Following the deaths and representations, the deadline for the enumeration phase was extended in Gujarat and in some other states.
Gujarat’s chief electoral officer (CEO), Hareet Shukla, said the draft rolls had been given to the political parties in printed and digital form, and uploaded on the website of the CEO.
Additional reporting by our Bengal bureau