Assigned poll duty, but can’t vote: Bengal teacher finds name deleted from electoral rolls ahead of election

Kolkata: Md Ahmed Hossain, a government high school teacher in Murshidabad, has been assigned a poll duty in this assembly election in West Bengal. Hussain, 59, will be the ‘first polling official’ in the upcoming assembly elections in West Bengal in Murshidabad, where he works.

Hossain has already received official intimation of his poll duty. But as he prepares for it, he faces a bigger worry. Despite voting in every previous Assembly election, Hossain may not be able to vote this time. Days after his assignment by the poll panel, Hossain discovered that his name had been removed from the voter list, despite valid documents, including service records and earlier voter ID cards.

“I do not understand why my name has been deleted. I had submitted all my documents,” Hossain, who is an assistant teacher at Natungram High School in Murshidabad, told LiveMint in Kolkata.

On 14 April, Roy was among the hundreds of residents of Bengal who assembled at a mass gathering against SIR deletions in Kolkata’s Park Circus. The protest was organised by Voteadhikar Rokkha Mancha, a citizens’ movement against the exclusion of names.

91 lakh deletions in West Bengal

Hossain is among the over 91 lakh deletions in West Bengal whose names have been removed from the electoral rolls ahead of elections. The state's voters have shrunk almost 12%, from 7.66 crore electors in October 2025 to 6.75 crore now. And the burden of proof is on the voters. West Bengal had 7.34 crore eligible voters in the 2021 assembly elections.

In the first list released in February, 58 lakh names were deleted, then around 6 Lakh more names were deleted. Later, from the adjudication list, around 27 lakh names were “deleted”, as per the final Supplementary List released on 31 March, a month after the adjudication process began.

Hossain is among the 27 lakh names whose fate would now be determined by tribunals, after the election, in all likelihood.

“They have snatched my voting right this time,” he says

Most of the assembly seats in West Bengal where maximum voters were deleted from the electoral rolls after the adjudication process are in the Muslim-dominated districts of Murshidabad and Malda, according to EC data.

What next?

A voter needs to apply to have their name deleted within 15 days. The appeal window begins on the date of the individual's rejection. Offline appeals are submitted at the DEO office, which forwards them to the tribunals for hearing.

“Have filed the appeal. But I am not the only one whose name has been deleted. There are lakhs and lakhs of them. I do not think that it can be undone and I will be able to vote. I feel disenfranchised,” Hossain said. He is the only member of his six-member family back home whose name has been removed from the electoral roll.

Hossain said that he received the official notification of election duty on March 20. The letter from the Election Commission said he is expected to attend two training sessions regarding his duties as the first polling official at Kurmitola High School in Murshidabad.

Hossain told LiveMint at the protest that he found his name in the ‘under adjudication’ category in the preliminary final list published on 28 February. And finally, on 31 March, Mondal found that his name had been deleted in the supplementary list.

Hossain is a voter in Sakona Village of Mangalkot Assembly constituency in Purba Bardhaman district, about 120 kms from Kolkata. The seat is voting on 29 April, the second phase of the West Bengal Elections.

The Election Commission of India (ECI)’s SIR of electoral rolls has been conducted in 13 states and Union Territories. West Bengal is the only state where the poll panel introduced an additional layer of special adjudication, removing voters mostly on grounds of ‘logical discrepancies’.

Stark mismatch for citizens

The Election Commission says the exercise is aimed at weeding out duplicate or outdated entries and adding genuine voters. SIR has triggered controversy and faced legal challenges since it was first held in Bihar in 2025. All political parties in West Bengal, except the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), had opposed the SIR. The BJP, on its part, insists that the process was a drive to sanitise the electoral rolls and remove “illegal infiltrators” from Bangladesh.

Experts have said that the sheer scale of voter exclusion is too large for tribunals to dispose of cases in years. “Most of those whose names have been deleted after adjudication are from marginalised, minority communities,”

Sabir Ahamed, founder of SABAR Institute, a Kolkata city-based research organisation that has been analysing SIR numbers, told LiveMint during an interview.

“Choosing not to vote, as some urban elites do, is one thing. But the SIR exercise has, in effect, created a stark mismatch for citizens who are expected to produce documents they may or may not have obtained decades ago,” he said.