The name of an IIM Calcutta teacher, whose father is a war veteran, has been deleted from the electoral rolls.

Nandita Roy, 39, a resident of Lake Gardens who had earlier taught at IIM Lucknow, said her name was in the draft electoral rolls published on December 16. However, in the preliminary “final” post-SIR rolls published on February 28, her name was marked “under adjudication”.

On March 31, she found that her name had been deleted from the supplementary list. She is a voter in the Rashbehari Assembly constituency.

A former student of Jadavpur University, Roy’s grandfather was in the Army. She visited the Directorate of Land Records and Surveys on Gopal Nagar Road, or Alipore’s Survey Building — the office of the district electoral officer (DEO) of Calcutta South — to submit her appeal for inclusion in the electoral rolls on April 8.

A voter, upon deletion of their name, must apply within 15 days. The appeal window begins from the date of individual rejection. Offline appeals are submitted at the DEO office, which forwards them to the tribunals for hearing.

“Given the pace of work, I do not see any chance of voting in this election,” she said.

Roy, who has been voting since 2009, said the BLO advised her to fill Form 6 so she could be enrolled as a fresh voter.

“I refused to do so because that would be brazenly illegal. When I have been voting since 2009, why should I identify myself as a fresh voter and accept a lie? Voting is my right, as it is the right of 91 lakh citizens,” Roy said. She added that her grandfather’s name was on the 2002 list.

Officials at the Survey Building were uncooperative, she alleged.

“They rejected my application initially, saying the contents were not verified. When I insisted that it was the duty of Election Commission staff to get it verified, they wrote ‘contents not verified’ and stamped a receipt copy,” she said.

The special intensive revision of electoral rolls in poll-bound Bengal has removed close to 91 lakh names, or nearly 12% of the state’s electorate. The exercise has shifted the burden of proof onto voters.

“In a democracy, the electorate chooses who governs them,” said Roy, an assistant professor in the Business Ethics and Communication Group at the B-school, where she has been teaching since 2021.

“Through the SIR, authorities are effectively choosing the electorate. The EC’s mandate has traditionally been to include voters. This time, the mandate appears to be exclusion,” she said.

On Sunday, Roy attended a programme at Park Circus organised by Nagorikata O Votadhikar Raksha Mancha, a citizens’ movement against the exclusion of names. She also participated in a protest march organised by the platform last Thursday.

“We need to approach platforms to tell the stories of our harassment. We do not know where we are headed,” she said.

Roy said she was extremely concerned as she had completed all formalities required by the EC but was still removed from the rolls.

“I was born in 1987. I had to provide proof of lineage. I listed my grandfather’s name in the 2002 electoral roll. My father’s name was not on the 2002 rolls,” she said.

Roy was earlier a voter in Jadavpur and later shifted to the Rashbehari constituency after filling Form 8 for change of address and details.

Like hundreds of thousands of disenfranchised citizens, she said she is unsure why her name was deleted. “I did not receive any official communication from the EC or the BLO,” she said.

“When I contacted my BLO after the deletion, he told me they tried to reach me by phone but could not. Therefore, I was marked untraceable. If someone misses a call and is then marked untraceable and deleted, democracy, as I keep saying, has gone into silent mode,” she said.

Roy said she was also concerned about the “large-scale deletion of women”, adding that even her domestic help’s name had been removed.

“If SIR is such an important process, it should be done properly, in a way that does not exclude citizens. Citizenship is my birthright. As Rahat Indori wrote: ‘Sabhi ka khoon hai shaamil yahan ki mitti mein, kisi ke baap ka Hindustan thodi hai’,” she said.