West Bengal Elections: Entire family in Murshidabad deleted from voter list in SIR – ‘What more proof do we need?’

Samserganj, Murshidabad: Tariq-ul-Alam, 27, anxiously awaits 21 April. Like other residents of Housenagar village in Tinkapuriya panchayat of Samserganj, he hopes the Election Commission of India will release additional names in the voter list, cleared by the appellate tribunals, allowing them to vote in the upcoming Assembly elections.

Samserganj, Alam's Assembly seat, saw 74,775 deletions in the Special Intensive Revision (SIR), making it the worst-affected among Murshidabad's 22 assembly seats. Voting in Samserganj takes place in the first phase on 23 April.

Murshidabad recorded the highest number of deletions during the Election Commission’s SIR exercise across poll-bound West Bengal, with a total of 4,55,137 names removed.

Human impact of deletions

Mint travelled to Samserganj in Murshidabad to understand the human impact of deletions. During interviews, the residents in different villages told Mint that their names were deleted despite valid documents.

Almost every household in Samserganj, a Muslim-majority seat in Murshidabad near the India-Bangladesh border, has one or two members deleted from the voter list.

Alam’s case is, however, unique. All eight members of his family have been struck from the rolls. These include Alam, his five brothers—Haider Ali, Saddam Hossain, Musavir Hossain and Mudasir Sheikh—their father, Sohidul Islam, and Alam’s two sisters-in-law.

“We have been living in this village for several generations. Our 65-year-old father, who is unwell, was born here. His name is on the 2002 list as mandated. Still, no one from our family made it to the voter list,” Alam, who works as a painter, told this reporter in his village.

Overall, the Samserganj seat saw 32 per cent deletions compared to the pre-adjudication voter list. The deletions have left lakhs of people in West Bengal, including Alam, with an uncertain future. They say that while they are worried about not being able to vote, their bigger concern is: what happens next?

“Most of the people who live in Samserganj are poor and do menial jobs to make ends meet. Suddenly, in a poll year, you ask them to get documents decades old. These are marginalised people. Their worry is beyond the ballot. They are looking at a deportation from their ancestral villages in the days to come,” said Md Alauddin, who contested the 2021 assembly polls from Samserganj seat as a candidate of Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI). Alauddin said his name, along with seven others from his 9-member family, still remains in the ‘under adjudication’ category.

‘Claimed by 6 others as parent’

Most of those deleted in Samserganj have been informed of discrepancies within their own family, Alauddin said. In a copy of the letter submitted to their local Electoral Registration Officer (ERO), the reason for Alam’s deletion is that he is “linked with someone, who is claimed by 6 others as parent.”

West Bengal votes in two phases. The first phase on 23 April will see elections in Murshidabad and adjoining Malda – both Muslim majority districts – going to the polls. The second phase is on 29 April. Results would be declared on 4 May.

Overall, 91 lakh names have been deleted from West Bengal's voter list since the SIR began. The state's voters have shrunk almost 12%, from 7.66 crore electors in October 2025 to 6.75 crore now. West Bengal had 7.34 crore eligible voters in the 2021 assembly elections.

Around 7 lakh new voters have been added to West Bengal's electoral rolls ahead of the assembly elections, but the Election Commission has yet to specify how many of these new entrants are first-time voters who have just turned 18, nor has it provided a detailed gender breakdown of these voters.

‘Logical discrepancies’ in Bengal rolls

The Election Commission conducted the SIR in 13 states and Union Territories. In West Bengal, however, it's different with the introduction of ‘adjudication’ and ‘logical discrepancies.’

A deleted voter must apply to have their name included on the list within 15 days of rejection. Offline appeals are submitted at the DEO office, which forwards them to the tribunals for hearing.

On 17 April, the Supreme Court ruled that individuals cleared by appellate tribunals can vote in the upcoming polls. The court directed the ECI to issue supplementary rolls with cut-off dates of 21 April and 27 April for the two polling phases.

“We have filed appeals. Alauddin bhai helped us do this. And now we are told that a new list of voters will be released on 21 April. We hope we make it to the list. Election is just days away,” said Alam on 17 April.

With the delayed establishment of tribunals for lakhs of cases, it seems virtually impossible for voters in Samserganj, like Alam, to get their names added to the voter list.

“We have given all documents. We took months to recollect them. What else can a poor man do to prove that he is a voter in India? It has been an unfair world to poor people like us who have lived here since birth,” says Alam.

All political parties in West Bengal, except the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), have opposed the SIR. The EC has called it an exercise to clean up the voter list. The BJP, on its part, insists that the process was a drive to remove ‘illegal infiltrators’ from Bangladesh and the Rohingyas. The TMC says it is a targeted exclusion of its voters.