Bengal blues: On SIR and elections

W est Bengal, one of the largest and politically consequential States in eastern India, goes to polls on April 23, with a second phase on April 29. As attention shifts from other elections held on Thursday, the eastern State presents a dispiriting picture. An election that should be about governance and livelihoods is instead being fought over identity and the composition of the electoral roll itself. The Trinamool Congress has been in power for three terms after wresting power from the Left Front. In a more rational world, the outcome of the 2026 Assembly elections would have depended upon the performance of the Mamata Banerjee-led government over the last 15 years and how it has positioned a State that continues to occupy a middling or low rank in major socio-economic indicators. Yet, governance has almost never been the criterion that has determined voter choices in the State in the recent past, and this election does not seem to be an exception. The State, one of a dozen that underwent a

Special Intensive Revision (SIR) process carried out by the Election Commission of India, registered a drop of 91 lakh electors — a 12% decrease. Ground reports revealed that the exercise, unlike in Bihar, where deletions were more evenly distributed on communal lines, disproportionately affected minority electors and those living in the border districts of West Bengal. Apart from those deleted initially in the SIR enumeration process, more than 60 lakh voters were flagged as having “logical discrepancies” in the draft roll. The Supreme Court, which had to intervene to decide the eligibility of these electors, appointed judicial officers for the task. But that process resulted in the disenfranchisement of 27 lakh electors, who have now been given the option of approaching tribunals. There is no clarity on whether this tribunal process will conclude before the election.

The anger on the ground over the SIR and the onerous burdens placed on electors to prove their eligibility, due to largely a flawed enumeration process adopted by an insouciant ECI, has now become an election issue on its own, sidestepping civic and governance issues. The Trinamool has projected the discontents over the SIR as a consequence of the Centre’s and the ECI’s machinations, while the BJP has wielded the SIR as a tool to polarise elections on religious lines. West Bengal desperately requires a polity where contestation is over how to revive employment-driven industrial growth in a largely agrarian and services economy, not over the religious and linguistic identities of voters.