SIR Row: Manchester-based Bengal scholar removed from electoral rolls, cancels India trip to vote

Kolkata: Mehebub Sahana was looking forward to visiting his family in West Bengal this April. A 36-year-old lecturer at the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom, Sahana had booked tickets for himself, his wife, Sanjida Parveen and their 18-month-old daughter, Iqra Parveen.

Sahana was visiting his ancestral village in the Khandaghosh assembly constituency in Purba Bardhaman district, over 100 kms from Kolkata, to cast his vote, where the second phase of the election is scheduled for 29 April.

But as fate would have it, days before the family of three could fly out of the UK to their home town, Sahana came to know that his name had been deleted from the voter list after it was kept in the ‘under adjudication’ category.

“The list was published on 31 March. I came to know about the deletion on 5 April,” Sahana, who is a Leverhulme Fellow and Lecturer in Geographic Information Systems at The University of Manchester, told LiveMint over phone on 15 April.

Sahana’s name, along with those of lakhs of others, has been removed from the electoral rolls of West Bengal as part of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise conducted by the Election Commission of India. Sahana spoke with Mint from Manchester over the phone. He said his family has been voting in the Khandaghosh assembly for four to five generations.

“When we came to know that my name is in ‘under adjudication’ category. I decided to cancel the tickets. We wanted to travel for vote and finish some pending tasks in our village. But now everything is cancelled,” he says.

Mehebub Sahana is not the only member of his family whose name has been deleted from the rolls in West Bengal. His father, Abdul Qudoos Sahana, brother and sister’s names have also been deleted and cannot perhaps vote in the upcoming elections in West Bengal.

“They did not even give us a proper reason. My father gave all documents. He has voted in the same village since the1980s. But there was a mismatch with 2002 voter list. He even has an arms license that he inherited from his father. He gave all documents – passport, Aadhar, election card and whatnot. What else does one need,” said Sahana, who moved to Manchester after studying at Jamia Millia Islamia in the national capital.

SIR in Bengal

The Election Commission of India (ECI)’s SIR of electoral rolls has so far been conducted in 13 states and Union Territories. In West Bengal, however, terms such as ‘adjudication’, ‘logical discrepancies’ and ‘voter tribunals’ have made it more controversial ahead of the two-phase assembly polls.

As many as 91 lakh names have been deleted from West Bengal's voter list since the SIR began.

In the first list released in February, 58 lakh names were deleted, then around 6 lakh more names were deleted. Later, around 27 lakh names were deleted from the adjudication list and published on 31 March.

All political parties in West Bengal, except the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), had 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 sanitise the electoral rolls and remove “illegal infiltrators” from Bangladesh.

West Bengal votes in two phases. The first phase will be held on 23 April and the second phase on 29 April. The results will be announced on 4 May.