A city voter, an assistant professor of history at Claremont McKenna College and an alumna of Jadavpur University, found her name struck off the electoral rolls — a fate she shares with millions who will be denied the chance to elect their legislator on Wednesday.

Ahona Panda is grappling with the dismay of disenfranchisement and deep uncertainty, despite having appeared in person for an SIR hearing in Jodhpur Park in January with a full set of documents.

Although based in the US, Panda has retained her Indian passport. “I come home twice every year to Jodhpur Park, where my parents live,” she said when Metro contacted her.

She is currently a visiting scholar at Cornell University in New York. “I made sure to be in India during voting several times after I left for studies abroad in 2011,” she said.

Summoned along with her family for a hearing in January, Panda said she carried her passport, Aadhaar card, PAN card, bank documents, and her school and university certificates.

When the revised rolls were published, her parents’ names appeared on the voter list; she figured in the deletion list.

Metro reached out to the booth-level officer (BLO) concerned. Speaking on condition of anonymity, he said: “Since she was born after 1987, her name was not on the 2002 voter list. So a document was needed to establish her link to her father, who was a voter then. She submitted her own passport copy. But that was not enough."

Told that her father had attended the hearing and that his documents had been submitted, the officer said those were part of his own application, not his daughter’s.

“The documents from the hearing were uploaded at one go, and our access to the app was blocked afterwards. So her name went into adjudication,” the BLO added.

Panda said: “I am very angry with the situation. If I, with all my privileges, feel traumatised, I shudder to think about those who have no voice or recourse. I was planning to fly back to Calcutta to vote, because this is an important election in the context of SIR. That my voting right is disputed upsets me the most.”